plugin: nwc: change default relay used for new NWC connections
What the developer wrote
Authored by f321x
plugin: nwc: change default relay used for new NWC connections
The default relay is the one that is positioned first in a NWC
connection string. This matters because most clients only use the
first relay and ignore the following ones.
We set the Alby relay as default because they operate it specifically
for NWC.
However it doesn't seem to work anymore, client requests time out.
I suspect they drop NIP-04 encrypted events to push wallets
to implement the newer NIP-44 encryption.
We should eventually implement this.
The primal relay happily accepts NIP-04 encrypted NWC events so
lets use this as default.
What changed, and why it matters
This commit simply changes the default internet relay address used by Electrum's NWC (Nostr Wallet Connect) plugin from Alby's server to Primal's server. It is a configuration change, not a code vulnerability fix. The commit message explains that Alby's relay appears to be timing out for older encrypted messages, so the developers are switching to a relay that still accepts them. There is no security bug being patched here.
No security action required. Users relying on the NWC plugin may wish to verify their preferred relay continues to function, and the project should monitor Alby/Primal relay reliability and plan NIP-44 support as noted in the commit message.
Security signals we found
No vulnerability fix present
Default third-party service endpoint changed
Operational reliability change for NWC relay
No cryptographic, authentication, or authorization changes
Evidence from the diff
The patch updates the default value of the SimpleConfig.NWC_RELAY ConfigVar in electrum/plugins/nwc/init.py from wss://relay.getalby.com/v1 to wss://relay.primal.net. The commit message states the Alby relay no longer reliably accepts NIP-04 encrypted NWC events and may be dropping them to encourage NIP-44 adoption, while the Primal relay continues to accept NIP-04 events. This is a default-endpoint change for operational compatibility, not a vulnerability remediation.
Changed components
electrum/plugins/nwc/__init__.pyNWC plugin default relay configurationInspect captured patch +1 / −1
diff --git a/electrum/plugins/nwc/__init__.py b/electrum/plugins/nwc/__init__.py
index 19ce276..eacf1d9 100644
--- a/electrum/plugins/nwc/__init__.py
+++ b/electrum/plugins/nwc/__init__.py
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ plugin_name = "nwc"
# This relay will be used as the first relay in the connection string.
SimpleConfig.NWC_RELAY = ConfigVar(
key='plugins.nwc.relay',
- default='wss://relay.getalby.com/v1',
+ default='wss://relay.primal.net',
type_=str,
plugin=plugin_name
)
Why this scored 19/100
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