A protocol for verified ephemeral broadcasting.
Skyless is an open protocol for live broadcast sessions built on NIP-53. It is designed around a single invariant: when a session ends, the story ends with it.
No participant lists. No ban logs. No chat transcripts. No session histories. No reputation graphs.
Every existing live streaming and moderation system accumulates. Platforms build dossiers — on broadcasters, moderators, and viewers — whether they intend to or not. Ban logs become behavioral records. Viewer counts become leverage. Moderation histories become chilling effects.
Skyless is built on the premise that ephemerality is a feature, not a limitation. The protocol encodes this as a hard guarantee, not a policy.
Session participants cannot be found, followed, or referenced once a session ends. This is a normative test condition, not a goal.
The full destruction list at session end:
- All participant identities and pubkeys linked to that session
- Per-session ban events (who banned whom, when, why)
- Rolodex (peer-to-peer) pairings
- Chat transcripts and content
- Per-session moderation counters and tolerance configuration
- Any timestamps that bind an action to a specific session window
What remains is intentionally lossy: governance telemetry (aggregate moderator style metrics like ban frequency and latency) that cannot be reverse-engineered into events. Think of it as instrument calibration, not history.
Skyless assumes an adversarial environment in which:
- Participants may attempt to reconstruct session history
- External observers may attempt to infer audience ideology or legitimacy
- Implementers may be tempted to extend aggregates into reputation systems
The design prioritizes ephemerality, non-attribution, and pluralism over auditability or correctness guarantees.
- Identity: Nostr pubkeys — no registration, no email, no custodial account
- Transport: NIP-53 live events — no custom relays required
- Session keys: Cryptographic, TTL-bound, non-reusable, identity-free
- Moderation: Temporary, session-scoped permissions that expire at session end
- Telemetry: Lossy derived aggregates (EMA, streaming quantiles) with no session IDs, no user IDs, no content
Skyless can be implemented as a client extension, middleware layer, or optional plugin. A zap.stream-style client can adopt Skyless without forking Nostr.
Skyless does not provide — and by design, cannot provide:
- Follower graphs or social discovery
- Reputation scores or trust registries
- Persistent moderation records or appeals
- Cross-session accountability
- Content inspection or transcript analysis
Any extension that enables storytelling, judgment, or durable hierarchy is a protocol violation.
- Version 0.1 — Current specification (ratified January 2026)
Open specification. Reference implementation in progress. Contributions welcome.