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Johnathan Corgan 6a564e26ac Prepare the v0.5.0 release content

Everything the release needs except the version number, which stays at
0.5.0-dev until the tag.

The changelog entry covers only the work that is new on this line. The
point release's forty-six entries arrived under their own heading with the
forward merge and are left alone; the twenty that remained are regrouped by
topic and eight more added for changes no entry covered. Three of those
eight matter to someone upgrading. Five root modules and four re-exports
left the public library surface and Node::connections narrowed, none of it
recorded anywhere; the entry names what to use instead and distinguishes
the removed connection-phase enum from the Noise type of the same name,
which is a different type that still exists. Tracing targets moved, so an
existing RUST_LOG filter stops matching rather than erroring. And the
handshake resend interval key no longer governs the first resend, which is
now a constant, though it still governs later ones.

Seven more entries cover the work that landed after the first content pass
was written: the experimental native datagram API, the fipsctl probe
diagnostic, per-instance transport addressing, the app-owned UDP socket
seam, and the connect, disconnect and path-MTU fixes. The four bug fixes
among them all reach the deployed line, so the release notes no longer
claim this release carries exactly one fix for a shipped bug; it carries
four.

There is no security section, because after the split every security entry
belongs to the point release. The release notes say so plainly rather than
leaving a reader upgrading across both releases to conclude this one
carries no security work.

The notes are organized by audience, since the release spans OpenWrt
routers, embedders, FreeBSD, and the existing platforms, and a single list
serves none of them. The native datagram API is given a section of its own
rather than folded into the embedding seam: it is a client-facing API
rather than a way to host a node, and its one rule with no Berkeley-socket
counterpart, that the v1 wire carries no half-close, needs to be somewhere
a client author will read it. FreeBSD is advertised as supported on x86_64
only, stated wherever the platform appears. Android is advertised as an
embedding seam and not as a supported platform: a compile-gated library
surface with no artifact and no host application guide.

The configuration table rename is carried through every shipped file that
taught the old spelling: nine documentation files, the OpenWrt sample
config and a test generator, twenty-two sites in all. Guides written this
same cycle were among them, which is how the omission was found. The
documentation that arrived with the native API was checked for the same
omission and was already clean. The compatibility tests keep the old
spelling deliberately, since they exist to test the fold.

The changelog section is the fold of master's [Unreleased], not a snapshot
of it. An earlier version of this commit took a copy that then drifted, so
each section ended up holding a bullet the other did not and re-folding
them would have picked a winner silently. Both causes were fixed on master
instead — the NixOS module had never been recorded there, and the
pre-release batch of fixes was new — so [Unreleased] is a strict superset
and this is a copy rather than a merge. [0.5.0] carries all forty-six
bullets byte for byte, [Unreleased] is empty, and [0.4.2] is untouched,
checked by hashing it against master's copy.

The BLE work landed after the content pass and gets one summary entry in
the changelog and one section in the release notes rather than nine
bullets: the ble_available gate replacing target_os = "linux",
packet-boundary recovery for stream-oriented backends, peer recognition by
node identity instead of a rotating link address, the L2CAP PSM moving
into the backend seam and onto the advertisement, the embedder-supplied
Android radio, bounded probe retry, and inbound handshakes moved off the
accept loop.

The two release-notes copies no longer share their link paths. Relative
links resolve from one directory only, so the seven written for
docs/releases/ all 404ed from the root copy. The root copy now uses paths
from the repository root and the versioned copy keeps the ../ form; both
sets were resolved against the tree. The same two links are broken the
same way in the v0.4.0 through v0.4.2 notes, left as shipped history.

The contributor tallies are re-derived against maint..HEAD rather than
adjusted: twenty commits from outside the project and 171 from me, with
Arjen at fifteen and fr34aky at two. An earlier count of twelve and 138
was carried from a measurement taken three days before this content was
written, and the BLE branch widened the gap after it. Arjen's NixOS flake
module, the UDP sin6_scope_id fix and most of the BLE rework were
uncredited, as was fr34aky's L2CAP PSM seam. They want one last re-derive
at tag time if anything lands before the tag.

A sweep of all 99 tracked markdown files against the tree corrected
fifty-three of them. Four told the reader to run a build.sh that does not
exist; the only harness builder is testing/scripts/build.sh. The BLE build
prerequisites were described as optional on the strength of a probe that
build.rs does not perform, and bluez was named a build prerequisite when
libdbus-sys asks only for libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config and bluez is the
runtime daemon. Link cost is the primary sort key in next-hop ranking, not
reserved for future use; Ethernet runs on macOS as well as Linux; the BLE
MTU is the L2CAP CoC MTU rather than a negotiated ATT_MTU; effective
Ethernet MTU is 1497; the LAN discovery subsystem is src/mdns and eight
citations still named a src/discovery that never existed here. The
connectivity states in three tutorials were invented, and their jq filters
matched nothing including healthy peers. One command filtered on a literal
fd97: address prefix, which only the first byte of fixes, so it returned
empty for all but one reader in 256 and every later step using the
variable failed silently. transports.tor.advertise_on_nostr was
undocumented despite being validated against node.rendezvous.nostr.enabled.

The transport design document gains the BLE section it never had, written
from the source: the backend cascade and its compile_error tripwire, the
platform gate, the PSM advertisement wire layout and the byte budget that
forces a 16-bit service-data key, and the probe and admission bounds.

Three source files carried the same class of staleness and are corrected
with the documentation: the OpenWrt ipk usage line and Makefile error text
both named a packaging/openwrt that does not exist, and chaos.sh parsed
--subnet without listing it.

Folded in with the content commit, having been prepared alongside it:

The three GitHub Action pins that had gone stale. Every third-party
action is pinned to a commit SHA, nothing reports that a pin has aged,
and re-resolving all ten against their tags found dorny/test-reporter@v2,
taiki-e/install-action@v2 and vmactions/freebsd-vm@v1 had moved. The
three install-action@nextest references stay unpinned, since that action
reads the tool to install from the ref name. check-action-pins.sh passes
at 75 references and all nine workflow files parse.

The lockfile refresh, which is the mutating half of the dependency sweep.
Thirty-six packages move to their latest semver-compatible versions and
every one is transitive; nothing declared in Cargo.toml changes version.
No advisory forces any of them. It was taken before the validation
battery, because a gate run against a lockfile that later moves proves
nothing about what ships.

The sha2 0.10 to 0.11, hkdf 0.12 to 0.13 and bech32 0.11 to 0.12 majors,
three of the four deferred at v0.4.0 for change surface rather than
security. All three land with no source change. sha2 and hkdf must move
together, since both depend on digest 0.11, and neither changes an
algorithm. That matters because the chaining-key KDF in the Noise
handshake is built on Hkdf::<Sha256>, where an output change would be a
wire break rather than a compile error; no known-answer vectors exist for
that path, so the wire-compatibility gate is what covers it. secp256k1
0.31 is deliberately absent, since nostr's own requirement would leave
two copies of the ECC library in the tree.

The README support matrix, rebuilt as one feature table broken out by
Linux variety. A single Linux column hid that Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and
NixOS are one glibc build differing in packaging, that OpenWrt is musl
and drops BLE, and that Android is not a daemon platform. Transport rows
sort by how many platforms carry them. A Native API row reads its
platform set from the cfg gates. The installer row becomes a package
format row naming the artifact, and only the .deb is exercised per
release.

Four changelog and release-note gaps the BLE re-walk found: a Bluetooth
LE bullet stranded inside the released 0.4.2 section, a missing Fixed
entry for the scan and probe loop counting a pool-refused connection as
an established link, the unnamed embedder call that installs an
application-owned radio, and the fact that stopping the transport now
stops scanning as well as advertising.

Three release-document gaps found walking the unsurveyed commits: the UDP
reuse-flag fix stated in the direction opposite to the one it was made,
with the silent second-daemon bind it prevents left unsaid; the corrected
native-API socket paragraph carried into both release-note copies, which
still named SOCK_SEQPACKET on FreeBSD and two kernels where three are
handled; and the coordinate-cache hardening, which shipped with no text
anywhere despite adding four operator-visible status fields. That last
entry states plainly that the checks are mitigations and not a closure,
since the coordinate is still not authenticated.

Also folded in, the documentation pass that followed the content commit:

A stage-pipeline diagram for the probe, embedded in the fipsctl
reference under the five-stage list. It draws the five stages left to
right with each stage's failure reasons below it, and the bypass that
skips both lookup stages when the coordinates are cached or the target
is a direct peer. Its branches come from the probe state machine rather
than from the report, so the path stage is drawn as the one failure that
does not stop the probe.

A rewrite of the README's "What FIPS does" section. It now opens with
what a machine running FIPS gets, rather than with the two deployment
modes, and gives the self-organizing and permissionless property its own
paragraph since it holds for both modes.

A regrouping of the README's feature list into the mesh, getting traffic
onto it, and running a node, with a bullet added for the native datagram
API, which had none despite sitting in the support matrix. The Quick
start now leads with the released packages rather than a source build.
It also fixes a real defect: the package enables fips.service and
fips-dns.service and starts neither on a fresh install, so .fips name
resolution was silently dead until the next reboot and neither page said
to start the service.

A rewrite of the release notes. They opened with seven subsections of
upgrade caveats and reached the first feature two hundred lines in; they
now open with a summary of the release and elaborate below it in the
same order. Android is stated as supported through an embedded crate
rather than as a standalone daemon, consistently across all three
documents. The OpenWrt pair is corrected: it is 802.11s between routers
with FIPS supplying encryption, authentication and routing, plus a
convention of an open !FIPS SSID a client joins over WiFi, not meshing
over a router's own radios. The probe's path output is described as the
least-common-ancestor walk, which is the worst-case fallback route
rather than the route a packet takes. Detail that did not change what a
reader does was cut from the notes and kept in the changelog.

2026-08-30 10:42:59 +00:00

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Nostr Event Reference

The Nostr-protocol surface FIPS uses for discovery and signaling. For the design of the discovery runtime and the rationale behind these event shapes, see ../design/fips-nostr-discovery.md. For operator activation recipes, see ../how-to/enable-nostr-discovery.md.

FIPS uses three Nostr event kinds:

Kind	Name	Encryption	Storage	Purpose
37195	Overlay advert	None (signed only)	Replaceable	Publish reachable transport endpoints
21059	Traversal signaling	NIP-44 inside NIP-59 gift wrap	Ephemeral	Carry `TraversalOffer`/`TraversalAnswer` payloads
10050	NIP-17 inbox relay list	None (signed only)	Replaceable	Tell dialers where to publish offers

All three are signed with the node's FIPS identity key (the same secp256k1 keypair Nostr uses); there is no separate Nostr key.

A parameterized replaceable event in the application-defined replaceable range 30000–39999 (the digits visually spell FIPS: 7=F, 1=I, 9=P, 5=S). Each node has a single in-place-updatable advert under its identity.

Content

The event content is a JSON document shaped as OverlayAdvert:

{
  "identifier": "fips-overlay-v1",
  "version": 1,
  "endpoints": [
    {"transport": "udp", "addr": "203.0.113.45:2121"},
    {"transport": "tor", "addr": "xxxxx.onion:8443"},
    {"transport": "udp", "addr": "nat"}
  ],
  "signalRelays": ["wss://relay.damus.io", "wss://nos.lol"],
  "stunServers": ["stun:stun.l.google.com:19302"]
}

Field semantics:

Field	Type	Description
`identifier`	string	Application namespace; must match the `d` tag.
`version`	integer	Advert schema version (currently 1).
`endpoints`	array	List of transport endpoints. Each is `{transport, addr}` where `transport` is `"udp"`, `"tcp"`, or `"tor"`, and `addr` is `"host:port"`, `".onion:port"`, or the literal `"nat"` (for UDP NAT-punch).
`signalRelays`	array?	Optional. Relays the publisher prefers for offer/answer signaling. Present only when at least one endpoint is `udp:nat`.
`stunServers`	array?	Optional. STUN servers the publisher uses for reflexive discovery. Present only when at least one endpoint is `udp:nat`. Informational — peers do not use these to choose their own STUN targets.

Signature scope

The Nostr event signature covers the standard Nostr event ID (serialized [0, pubkey, created_at, kind, tags, content]), so the content JSON, tags, kind, and timestamp are all bound to the signing identity.

Replacement and deletion

Because kind 37195 is replaceable, publishing a new advert replaces the prior one in the same (pubkey, d-tag) slot. To withdraw an advert without publishing a successor, the node publishes a NIP-9 kind 5 delete event referencing the prior advert.

Kind 21059 — Traversal Signaling

An ephemeral event (kinds in the 20000–29999 range are not stored by conforming relays). Used to deliver gift-wrapped, NIP-44-encrypted TraversalOffer and TraversalAnswer payloads between dialer and responder during a UDP NAT hole-punch.

Encryption envelope

The wire shape is the standard NIP-59 gift wrap:

Rumor — the unsigned TraversalOffer/TraversalAnswer payload (JSON), authored by the actual sender's identity.
Seal — a kind 13 event whose content is the rumor NIP-44-encrypted to the recipient's pubkey, signed by the sender.
Gift wrap — a kind 21059 event whose content is the seal NIP-44-encrypted to the recipient under an ephemeral key, signed by that ephemeral key. The outer pubkey of the kind 21059 event is the ephemeral identity, not the sender's real identity.

Only the intended recipient can decrypt the wrap to recover the seal, and only the recipient can decrypt the seal to recover the rumor.

Wrapped payloads

The TraversalOffer carries:

type — message-type tag.
sessionId — unique identifier correlating offer and answer.
senderNpub / recipientNpub — bech32-encoded pubkeys, repeated inside the encrypted payload (the outer wrap pubkey is ephemeral).
issuedAt / expiresAt — Unix-ms timestamps; expiresAt is issuedAt + signal_ttl_secs * 1000.
nonce — random per-offer value.
reflexiveAddress — {protocol, ip, port} observed via STUN, or null if STUN failed or returned no usable address.
localAddresses — array of {protocol, ip, port} private candidates, populated when share_local_candidates is enabled.
stunServer — the STUN server actually used (informational).

The TraversalAnswer echoes sessionId and carries:

type, senderNpub, recipientNpub, issuedAt, expiresAt, nonce — same shape as the offer.
inReplyTo — the offer's event id.
accepted — boolean; false when the responder has no usable addresses.
reflexiveAddress and localAddresses — the responder's candidates, in the same shape as the offer.
stunServer — informational.
punch — a PunchHint { startAtMs, intervalMs, durationMs } telling both sides when to begin probing and how aggressively. Absent on rejected offers.
reason — optional rejection string when accepted is false.
offerReceivedAt — optional responder wall-clock (Unix ms) at the moment it received the offer; the initiator uses this to derive a clock-skew estimate.

Relay selection

Dialer publishes offers to the recipient's NIP-17 inbox relays (kind 10050) when available; otherwise to the local node.rendezvous.nostr.dm_relays list. The responder publishes the answer back through the same relay channel.

Kind 10050 — NIP-17 Inbox Relay List

A standard NIP-17 event used by FIPS to advertise which relays this node prefers for receiving direct-message-style signaling — for FIPS, the gift-wrapped traversal offers (kind 21059).

This is NIP-17 (kind 10050, inbox relays for DM delivery), not NIP-65 (kind 10002, general read/write relay list). The two serve different purposes:

Kind 10002 (NIP-65) — general read/write relays for ordinary event publication and subscription.
Kind 10050 (NIP-17) — relays the recipient prefers for receiving DM-shaped (NIP-59 wrapped) events.

FIPS publishes its own kind 10050 on startup so dialers can discover where to send traversal offers. When dialing a peer, FIPS first fetches the peer's kind 10050 from the peer's advert_relays; on fetch failure it falls back to the local dm_relays list.

Content

Empty per NIP-17.

8.2 KiB

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Nostr Event Reference

Tags

Content

Signature scope

Replacement and deletion

Kind 21059 — Traversal Signaling

Encryption envelope

Wrapped payloads

Relay selection

Kind 10050 — NIP-17 Inbox Relay List

Tags

Content

See also

8.2 KiB Raw Blame History Unescape Escape

Nostr Event Reference

Kind 37195 — Overlay Advert

Tags

Content

Signature scope

Replacement and deletion

Kind 21059 — Traversal Signaling

Encryption envelope

Wrapped payloads

Relay selection

Kind 10050 — NIP-17 Inbox Relay List

Tags

Content

See also

8.2 KiB

Raw Blame History