Flotilla

Flotilla is a community-focused nostr client built by Hodlbod, the creator of Coracle. The model is "relays as groups": each relay is the home of a community, and the relay's own configuration decides who can read and write there. A user joins a community by adding the relay; a community owner sets policy by running, hosting, or paying for the relay. Members get chat, threads, events, voice rooms, zaps, and private messages without any of those features being routed through a central operator.

The web app is a PWA. Users can join multiple communities at once, switch between them like servers in Discord, and take part in synchronous chat or asynchronous threads on the same relays. Other features include a calendar of nostr events, NIP-17 gift-wrapped DMs, web of trust filtering, and "white-labeled" instances that an operator can brand for their own community.

Why fund it?

Most online communities live on platforms whose owners can change the rules, demonetize the operator, or deplatform the members at any time. Self-hosted alternatives exist, but each one is its own silo with its own accounts. Flotilla puts community ownership back in the operator's hands by leaning on nostr primitives that already work: a relay anyone can run, an identity that travels between communities, and an event format that other clients can read. A user who is part of ten Flotilla communities still has one keypair, one inbox, and one social graph.

OpenSats supports Hodlbod through a long-term support grant, which is what funds the ongoing work on Flotilla alongside Coracle and the Welshman library that powers both clients.

What's next?

Coracle has moved into maintenance mode while Flotilla takes the lead. Active work includes voice and video rooms, Caravel, a relay-hosting platform built so non-technical operators can spin up a community without running their own server, and Pomade, an email-and-password login protocol that lets newcomers join Flotilla without first learning about keypairs.

For a detailed look at recent progress, see the Advancements in Nostr Clients impact report.