Key-Convertr

People are copy-pasting nostr private keys into webpages to convert between the original hex-encoding and bech32-encoding (specified in NIP-19).

This is kind of bonkers, so here's a command-line utility that you can run to convert public/private keys between hex-encoding and the NIP-19 bech32 encoding. It can also convert note id's, and even convert a list of public keys from NIP5 configured domains from hex to bech32 in single shot.

Features:

Note: "keys" + "nip5" arguments accept multiple inputs for bulk operations

• convert from bech32 (npub/nsec/note) to hex
• convert from hex to bech32 (npub/nsec/note)
• supports NIP-05 domain identifiers:
  • calls given nip5 domain to get nostr.json containing user pubkeys (located at domain.com/.well-known/nostr.json)
  • extracts and converts all pubkeys from hex to bech32 format
  • as specified in [NIP-05] (https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/05.md)

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Installation

Building with Cargo

If you have cargo installed, then from the key-convertr directory, just do cargo install --path .. It will put a program called key-convertr in your $HOME/.cargo/bin directory.

Then, to convert from a hex-encoded pubkey to a bech32-encoded pubkey, you can do

$> key-convertr --kind npub 3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6

Running with Docker

If you have docker installed, you can simply do docker run --rm ghcr.io/rot13maxi/key-convertr:main to download and run the latest main revision of the tool. Then just follow the instructions below. For example,

$> docker run --rm ghcr.io/rot13maxi/key-convertr:main --kind npub 3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6

Building with Docker

If you have docker installed, you can do docker build -f docker/Dockerfile -t key-convertr . to build a container (no local cargo install required!). Then just do docker run --rm key-convertr [args] to run it. For example:

$> docker run --rm key-convertr --kind npub 3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6

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Usage

Just provide the hex-encoded key or note-id and a --kind argument. The kinds supported are:

• npub
• nsec
• note

To convert from an bech32(npub/nsec/note) to hex-encoding, you can do

$> key-convertr --to-hex npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6
3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d

To convert from an hex-encoding to bech32 (npub/nsec/note), you can do

$> key-convertr --kind npub 3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6

To convert list of public keys for a given NIP-05 domain identifier, you can

$> key-convertr --nip5 satoshivibes.com
Aurelius,npub169yu4d6xl8a6d4xvfyhstjdxr0cc7qtfq5pch5kwv4k2wkapa3pq8v2thg
frontrunbitcoin,npub199samvtne4sahhdkr6dcq3mauuqs7k7r3eulufp2y2lf04zewglqtu9mfd
lukeonchain,npub138guayty78ch9k42n3uyz5ch3jcaa3u390647hwq0c83m2lypekq6wk36k

• you can also enable NIP5 related stats via "--nip-stats" or "-s";
  • this prints out summary stats in this format: domain=SomeName.com|count=21
  • this output could then be parsed (if needed) by other dev tools/libraries

$> key-convertr --nip5 strike.me --nip-stats
ZAurelius,npub169yu4d6xl8a6d4xvfyhstjdxr0cc7qtfq5pch5kwv4k2wkapa3pq8v2thg
frontrunbitcoin,npub199samvtne4sahhdkr6dcq3mauuqs7k7r3eulufp2y2lf04zewglqtu9mfd
lukeonchain,npub138guayty78ch9k42n3uyz5ch3jcaa3u390647hwq0c83m2lypekq6wk36k
domain=satoshivibes.com|count=3

You can also pass multiple keys/notes to the tool by putting a comma or space between them:

• example with multiple "keys"

$> key-convertr --kind npub 3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d,863883611bdbe6291c081fb8775908a7ab0cb04b608405ec1e85e9f938020a98
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6
npub1scugxcgmm0nzj8qgr7u8wkgg574sevztvzzqtmq7sh5ljwqzp2vqf45w5j

• example with multiple NIP5 domains (output omitted due to size)

$> key-convertr --nip5 nostrplebs.com,strike.me,satoshivibes.com

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TODO

Optimizations:

• multi threaded "--nip5" logic (multiple domains converted in parallel; some lists will be very large i.e nostrplebs.com)