HAVEN, the Nostr relay

What it's good for

Pick HAVEN for one person's own relay: your notes, your inbox and a backup.

• Four relays on one address. Private (only you and whitelisted keys), chat (your web of trust, behind AUTH), inbox (only notes that tag you) and outbox (what you post, also sent on to other relays). (source)
• Media hosting. A Blossom server for your images and videos is built in. (source)
• Import and backup. haven import copies your old notes, and notes you're tagged in, from other relays. haven backup writes JSONL, locally or to S3, Google Cloud Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces or Cloudflare R2. (source)
• Built on khatru. fiatjaf's relay framework handles the protocol, so HAVEN's own code is the policy. (source)

Running HAVEN yourself

HAVEN is made for one person, so moderation is mostly done for you: only you, and the people you let in, can write. The work is in keeping it available. Your inbox and outbox relays are where other people's apps look for you, so when HAVEN is down, they don't find your notes. You download each new release yourself, keep a reverse proxy and TLS in front of port 3355, and set up its backups to S3-compatible storage so a lost server doesn't mean lost notes.

If what you want is a relay for your own notes, you don't have to run one: we're opening hosted relays, each one yours and private by default, kept online, updated and backed up nightly. They aren't open yet; reserving is free and commits you to nothing. HAVEN on your own server gives you its four relays and media hosting under your control.

How to install it

1. Download a release

Pick the archive for your system on the releases page and unpack it into a folder. Then copy the example config files and edit .env (your npub, the relay's URL, its names). From the repo.

mkdir haven
tar -xzf haven_[Platform]_[Architecture].tar.gz -C haven
cd haven
cp .env.example .env
cp relays_import.example.json relays_import.json
cp relays_blastr.example.json relays_blastr.json

2. Or build it

With Go 1.24 or newer: From the repo.

git clone https://github.com/barrydeen/haven.git
cd haven
go build

3. Keep it running

The README has a systemd unit (ExecStart pointing at the haven binary, Restart=always). Enable it once: From the repo.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start haven
sudo systemctl enable haven

TLS and the reverse proxy

HAVEN listens on port 3355. Its README has nginx, Apache and Caddy examples; with Caddy, reverse_proxy localhost:3355 is enough and certificates are automatic. Allow uploads of 100 MB for media.

The full walk-through, with a reverse proxy, DNS and a check at the end, is in the guide to running a Nostr relay.

What it says in NIP-11

HAVEN puts https://github.com/barrydeen/haven in the software field; that is how our monitor recognises it. Its version is the Go build info: the release tag for a release build, a pseudo-version or (devel) otherwise.