Your own Nostr relay (strfry + Caddy)

What you need

• A VPS (a Hetzner CX22 is plenty)
• A domain or subdomain, e.g. relay.yourdomain.com, with an A record pointing at the VPS IP

Install (3 steps)

1. Copy this folder to the server: scp -r relay-setup root@YOUR_IP:~/
2. SSH in and run: cd relay-setup && sudo bash setup.sh relay.yourdomain.com
3. Wait ~30 seconds for the TLS certificate, then your relay is live at: wss://relay.yourdomain.com

Hook it into the chat app

Open the chat app, tap the relay dots in the header, and add wss://relay.yourdomain.com. To make it permanent, edit the RELAYS line near the top of the app's script and put your relay first.

Useful commands

• Logs: docker logs -f strfry
• Restart: docker compose restart
• Update: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
• Full DB export (backup): docker exec strfry strfry export > backup.jsonl

Notes

• The config accepts writes from anyone. For a private relay, strfry supports write-policy plugins to whitelist pubkeys — ask me and I'll add one.
• Event DB lives in ./strfry-db — back it up if you care about history.