Learn · Identity
How do you create a Lightning FM account?
You don't, because there are no accounts. Your identity is a cryptographic keypair, generated on your own machine, that we never see. No email, no password, no signup form. This page explains what that means in practice, including the part that cuts against us.
When you first open the desktop app, it generates a Nostr keypair locally and stores the private key in your macOS Keychain, the operating system's encrypted credential store.[2] The key never leaves your machine and is never sent to us. There is no registration step because there is nothing to register: the key is the identity.
Everything you do as an artist hangs off that key. Every track you publish is an event signed by it, your profile is data you signed with it, and fans follow the key rather than a page we host. That is why leaving costs nothing: the identity was never in our database to begin with.
With no reset email, backup is on you, and the app makes it concrete. It exports your key as an ncryptsec file: the key encrypted with a passphrase you choose, using the NIP-49 standard.[1] The file is useless without the passphrase, so it is safe to keep on a drive, in a password manager, or anywhere you keep things that matter. The app verifies a backup actually decrypts before treating it as one.
Because NIP-49 is an open standard rather than our format, the backup is not hostage to our software either. Any Nostr tool that speaks NIP-49 can restore it.
A platform account is a row in the platform's database, and whoever controls the database controls the account: they can reset it, suspend it, transfer it, or leak it. A keypair has no row anywhere. Nobody can reset it, because there is no authority above it. Nobody can take it, because it was never held anywhere but with you.
The same property, stated as a cost: if you lose the key and the backup, the identity is unrecoverable, by you or by anyone. We cannot rescue it, and a platform that could would be a platform that could also take it. Make the backup when the app asks. It asks for a reason.
Do I need an email address or password?
Not for your identity. The desktop app generates a Nostr keypair on your machine; that keypair is your identity, and it never involves an email, a password, or a signup form. The only place email appears is if you request access to the hosted beta, and that is ordinary correspondence with us, unrelated to your key.
What happens if I forget my password?
There is no password to forget. There is a key, and a backup of that key encrypted with a passphrase you chose (NIP-49). If you lose the key on your machine, you restore from the backup with your passphrase. If you lose both the key and the backup, the identity is gone; nobody, including us, can recover it. That is the honest cost of an identity nobody else controls.
Can Lightning FM reset, suspend, or take my identity?
No. We never see your private key: it is generated on your machine and stored in your macOS Keychain. There is no reset flow because there is nothing on our side to reset, and there is no suspension that touches the key. We can stop providing hosted conveniences, but your identity, your catalog signatures, and your followers stay yours.
How is this different from a platform account?
A platform account lives in the platform's database, so the platform can reset it, suspend it, hand it to someone else under a court order, or lose it in a breach. A keypair inverts every one of those: nobody can reset it (there is no authority above it), nobody can take it (it was never held anywhere but with you), and it works identically on any Nostr application, not just ours.
Where exactly is the key stored?
In the macOS Keychain, the operating system's encrypted credential store, on the machine where you created it. The backup is a NIP-49 ncryptsec file: your key encrypted with your passphrase, safe to keep on a drive or in a password manager. The app verifies a backup decrypts correctly before treating it as one.
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