Wisp

Wisp is a fast Android nostr client built by Barry Deen. It packages the familiar parts of a social app into one mobile experience: a chronological feed, photos and videos, rooms, live streams, private messages, reactions, and a wallet for sending money as easily as liking a post.

The client is designed for people who are new to nostr. Wisp implements the outbox model, supports dedicated DM relay sets, and uses end-to-end encrypted private messages. Users can join topic rooms, build custom feeds, upload media through Blossom, and move around the network without depending on a single platform account.

Wisp also includes a non-custodial wallet based on the Breez SDK (Spark). New users can receive zaps, send sats to creators, pay friends, and recover their wallet with a seed phrase. The wallet can display balances in USD, and encrypted wallet backups are stored on relays the user controls.

Why fund it?

Nostr needs clients that feel useful before a user understands relays, keys, or Lightning. Wisp hides much of that complexity while keeping the underlying protocol benefits intact: portable identity, user-chosen relays, open-source code, and direct bitcoin payments.

OpenSats supported Wisp in the seventeenth wave of Nostr grants. The grant helps Barry work on Wisp full-time and keeps development focused on onboarding, mobile polish, private messaging, and payments.

Barry's related nostr work also includes relay infrastructure that can make clients like Wisp more useful: MOAR, a configurable multi-tenant relay gateway; Haven, a personal relay for storing, backing up, and sharing user events; and AlgoRelay, an algorithmic relay for personalized feeds.

What's next?

The roadmap starts by rounding out the Android app: leaving beta, making the wallet easier to understand with Normie Mode, distributing through Google Play, and bringing Wisp to the web. From there, the work moves across platforms with Wisp for iOS, while Dark Wisp explores a more privacy-focused Android fork. Relay-based private communities are also planned.