MintRadar ⚡
Privacy-first monitoring for Cashu ecash mints — real-time status, reliability scoring, and decentralized discovery via Nostr.
Live: mintradar.org
About, privacy and rules: mintradar.org/about
✨ Features
📊 Real-Time Monitoring
- Probes all known mints every 5 minutes via
/v1/info
- A mint is ONLINE only if the endpoint answers with a successful HTTP status and valid JSON whose
nuts field is an object
- Server-side latency measured from Nuremberg, DE (Hetzner Cloud)
- "Show my latency" button for a client-side test directly from your browser
- Each mint reads Online, Degraded, Offline or Archived; the site and the wallet API use the same rule (see mintradar.org/methodology)
🛡️ Reliability Score System
Composite score (0–100, in points, not a percentage) calculated server-side after every probe. Shown alongside a separate Community Rating (average of Nostr reviews), so a signal that does not come from the operator sits next to the objective one. This is a health / transparency score — it does not measure solvency or whether a mint can pay out.
Five components feed the score:
| Component | Basis |
|---|
| Uptime | Availability over the last 24 hours |
| Audit Reliability | Share of the last 7 days' swaps whose failure cashu.info attributes to the mint. Too few swaps, no cashu.info data, or stale data scores a neutral middle value, not zero. audit.8333.space is not used for the score |
| NUT Support | Supported NUT specs, out of the set of mint-side NUTs MintRadar tracks. A NUT-04 or NUT-05 the mint has switched off ("disabled": true in /v1/info) does not count |
| Version Freshness | How far the mint's software (Nutshell or cdk) is behind the newest stable release of the same software |
| Contact Info | Contact methods provided (email, Twitter, Nostr); capped, so a long contact list cannot inflate the score |
Mints that were discovered recently are capped below the maximum, even if every component is maxed.
The exact weights, audit bands, thresholds, cap and the change log are published on mintradar.org/methodology (generated from the same constants the backend uses).
Interactive breakdown modal on each mint — hover any row for a tooltip explaining the scoring logic.
🔍 Dashboard & Discovery
- Search by name or URL
- Filter panel: Status (All / Online / Offline), Unit (SAT / USD / EUR, any of the selected), Method (one payment method the mints advertise in NUT-04 or NUT-05, such as bolt11, bolt12 or onchain; a side the mint switched off does not count), Reliability Score minimum, Hide test mints
- There is no NUT filter in the panel; the only way to filter by NUT is a
?nuts= link (comma-separated NUT numbers, e.g. ?nuts=9,12; a mint must support all of them), shown as dismissible NUT-NN tags
- Active filters shown as dismissible tags at the top of the open panel
- Dashboard state lives in the URL, so views can be shared as links:
?q= (search), ?sort= (name/latency/rating/reliability/reviewCount) with ?dir= (asc/desc), ?status= (all/offline), ?reliability= (0–100), ?testmints=hide, ?unit= (sat, usd, eur, comma-separated, e.g. ?unit=sat,usd), ?method= (one method, e.g. ?method=bolt12) and ?compare= (comma-separated mint URLs, also on the Watchlist page); default values are omitted
- Deep links: Mint Detail tabs open from the URL hash (
#overview, #history, #nuts, #audit, #reviews, #review-<id>), and Tools from /tools#token, /tools#payment-request and /tools#pick
- Counts: the header shows online and tracked mints; "tracked" is every mint in the database (archived ones included), and the grid footer reads "Showing X of ". Mints the default view hides (offline, degraded, archived) sit behind a "N mints hidden (offline 24h+)" toggle; Show reveals all of them
- Sort by Latency / Name / Reliability Score / Rating / Most reviewed (asc/desc) — Rating uses a confidence-adjusted average, (n·avg + 5·3.5) / (n + 5), so mints with few reviews rank lower and a mint with one 5★ review doesn't outrank one with eighty 4.8★ (the stars and counts shown do not change)
- Compact (list) and expanded (card) view toggle
- Single URL or bulk mint submission (paste multiple URLs at once)
- Recently discovered mints get a New badge; known dev/test mints are badged separately
🪙 Mint Detail
- Header, NUTs tab and NUT dialog show a NUT-04 (deposit) or NUT-05 (withdrawal) the mint has switched off as Disabled by operator; Open in Cashu.me is then hidden
- Fees and limits card on the NUTs tab: the mint's input fee per coin, with examples per unit, and the min/max limits per payment method
- Archived mints keep their history, but hide the Mint QR, the Cashu.me button and the Outdated pill
📈 Historical Data
- Charts for Latency, Uptime, and Reliability Score over 24 h / 7 d / 30 d / 90 d
- Per-period averages for latency and uptime, with the change vs. the previous period
- Full Mint History panel with per-probe results
- Audit tab on each mint — swap data from two independent auditors, with a source switch (cashu.info / 8333.space) when both have data. It opens on audit.8333.space when that data is present and fresh, and on cashu.info otherwise (the visitor can switch at any time). The 8333.space view has a summary strip (mints / melts / recent success rate / avg swap time), an outcome bar and a recent-swaps table; the cashu.info view shows the failures cashu.info attributes to the mint. The tab itself is display only: the Reliability Score's audit row always uses the stored cashu.info detail, and the breakdown shows a muted "data N days old" note when that detail is getting old
🌐 Global Stats
- The network right now: online mints out of tracked, average uptime, median latency, and the share of mints running outdated software
- Network Health Index (one score for the whole network, with its components)
- Top mints by Reliability Score and by uptime
- Software in use across known mints
- NUT coverage across the network (on mintradar.org/stats): how many online mints support each NUT, and which ones
- Geographic distribution of the mints' servers
- Reliability movers — recent risers and fallers — and a Reliability Score trend chart
⚖️ Mint Comparison Tool
Compare up to 4 mints side-by-side: Status, Reliability Score, Community Rating, Uptime, Latency, Input fee, Deposit and Withdrawal methods (a side the mint switched off is marked), Limits, Units, NUT count and support grid, software version and its history. The mint picker works from the keyboard. On narrow screens the mints stay side by side in a compact table with a fixed label column (more than two scroll sideways), and an Only differences switch hides the rows where all mints agree.
👁️ Watchlist with Nostr Login
- Login via NIP-07 browser extension, nsec private key, or NIP-46 bunker / Amber
- Adding a mint to your watchlist requires a Nostr login (you're prompted to sign in first) — this keeps the list portable across devices
- The watchlist itself is stored locally (IndexedDB) and optionally synced across devices as NIP-44 encrypted kind:10003 events on Nostr relays
- There is no JSON/CSV export: the list is the in-app watchlist plus optional Nostr sync
- Optional downtime/recovery DMs via Nostr (NIP-17 gift wrap). They can arrive even with the browser tab closed, at a Nostr client that supports private messages; delivery depends on relays and your client. The client registers via
POST /api/notifications/subscribe (NIP-98) and the MintRadar notification service sends gift-wrapped DMs from its service key. Notifications are off for a newly watched mint: on the Watchlist card you turn on "Goes down" / "Goes up" yourself, and optionally any of the "More alerts" ("Mint/melt issues", "Version outdated", "Lost NUT04/05"), each one separately, and a pill shows as on only after the server confirmed the subscription (a failed request leaves it off and says so). Alerts are rate-limited per mint and per subscriber, so a flapping mint cannot flood your inbox. A DM contains only a fixed text, the mint's host name and a link to MintRadar, never text taken from the mint. Subscriber relays must use the standard web ports. A mint's URL is sent to the backend only while notifications are on for that mint — turn them off and the URL is not shared
📡 Nostr NIP-87 Discovery
Automatic mint discovery on a schedule from a set of public Nostr relays, using kind:38172 mint announcements and kind:38000 review events (URL mining), plus the audit.8333.space API — the sources run in parallel.
🔧 Tools
- Token Inspector — paste a Cashu token (
cashuA / cashuB) to see its mint, amount, unit, proof count, memo, mint status, and Reliability Score, plus a signature check (NUT-12), the exact fee to claim the token (the mint's input fee per coin, rounded up) and whether its keyset is still active at the mint — with a link to Mint Detail or Cashu.me. Optional Check if spent queries the mint (NUT-07) for unspent / spent / pending / partial proofs
- Payment request inspector — paste a NUT-18 payment request (
creqA…) to see its amount, unit, description, locking condition, transports and accepted mints, each accepted mint with its MintRadar status and Reliability Score when it is tracked
- Best Mint for Me — a short wizard: pick your currency unit and how much you plan to store, then multi-select what matters (fast latency measured from your browser, Reliability Score, Lightning in + out, seed-phrase restore/NUT-09, locked payments (P2PK)/NUT-11, live WebSocket updates/NUT-17). The top matches show latency, uptime, Reliability Score, community rating, LN support, and mint/melt limits for the chosen unit
📚 Learn
A 5-module "Cashu 101" course, written as plain-language text with illustrated diagrams and key-takeaway callouts — no quizzes or progress tracking, just prev/next navigation between modules:
- Cashu Basics — what Cashu is: the mint holds the Bitcoin, you hold a bearer token, and blind signatures keep transfers private
- Understanding the Risks — why a mint can disappear or refuse to pay, why nobody can currently verify that a mint has real backing, and how to limit what you stand to lose
- How to Choose a Cashu Mint — what to check (uptime, NUT support, software freshness, operator transparency) and how MintRadar's Reliability Score combines those signals
- Getting Started with a Wallet — choosing a wallet, setting up your first mint, a first deposit, sending and receiving tokens, fees (a mint's input fee per coin and the Lightning fee reserve when you withdraw), and backing up your wallet
- Day-to-day habits — keeping your backup current, spreading funds across mints, checking before you commit, redeeming regularly and keeping an eye on your mints
👛 Wallet Directory
A hand-maintained list of Cashu-compatible wallets — each with supported platforms, a short description, and a link to the wallet's own site — plus a short section on running your own mint. No ranking or reviews.
⭐ Nostr-Based Reviews
Mint Detail shows community reviews as kind:38000 events. On page load they're fetched live from a small fast relay set; a server-side sync additionally aggregates reviews from a broader relay set so counts and averages stay complete. Ratings are parsed from the review's rating tag or its [N/5] marker. Author profiles (name + avatar) are resolved from Nostr. Avatars are only loaded over HTTPS.
- Events with neither a rating nor a comment are not shown in the list and are not counted on mint cards
- Reviews from a key that is both listed as the mint's Nostr contact and the author of the mint's NIP-87 announcement are labelled and not counted in the Community Rating; a review from a key the mint lists only as a contact is counted and carries a neutral label
- Filter chips: All, 5★, Critical, and a separate Hide anon toggle
- A short disclaimer notes these are unverified NIP-87 events from the open Nostr network
- Write your own review from the page, with a "Signing with …" indicator for the active login method
🔗 Social Link Previews
Sharing a mint page link on Twitter/X, Discord, Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp or Facebook shows a preview card with that mint's name, Reliability Score, and online status — server-rendered for link-preview crawlers that don't run JavaScript.
🔒 Privacy-First
- No analytics, no tracking, no telemetry, no third-party scripts
- No cookies
- Fonts are self-hosted — no requests to Google Fonts or any external font CDN
- Nostr private keys never leave your browser and are never stored or transmitted to the backend
- Token Inspector and Payment request inspector: a pasted token or request is decoded in your browser and never sent to MintRadar's servers; the inspector does not contact a request's accepted mints or transports. Verifying and "Check if spent" contact the mint named in the token; "Open in cashu.me" puts the token in the link's #fragment, which browsers do not send to servers, and "Redeem to Lightning" opens the redeem page without the token
- Watchlist data lives in your browser (IndexedDB) and optionally encrypted on Nostr relays under your own key; a mint's URL is additionally sent to MintRadar's backend only while you have notifications on for that mint, so it knows what to monitor for your downtime/recovery DMs
🔁 Automatic Backups
The hosted instance takes regular automatic database backups.
📎 Public API
Read-only JSON under https://mintradar.org/api/, including a stable API for wallets (GET /api/v1/wallets/mints, OpenAPI file in MintRadar/docs/openapi/wallets-v1.yaml). Per mint it gives status, Reliability Score, units, NUTs, mintDisabled / meltDisabled for a switched-off NUT-04 / NUT-05, and on request methods, limits, keysets and feeExamples; the list filters by unit, minScore, nuts, method, maxInputFeePpk, eligible and changedSince. Rate-limited. See MintRadar/docs/API.md. How the score is computed (with its change log): mintradar.org/methodology; a quick start for wallet developers: mintradar.org/for-wallets. Signed health assertions (Nostr kind 30385) are published under the key [email protected]: see mintradar.org/for-wallets.
🛠️ Tech Stack
Frontend
- React 19 + TypeScript + Vite 8
- TanStack Query v5, Zustand, Dexie (IndexedDB)
- Recharts, vite-plugin-pwa (PWA / offline support)
- nostr-tools (NIP-07, NIP-44, NIP-46 and the nsec login)
- Self-hosted open-source fonts: DM Sans and JetBrains Mono, plus the system
ui-monospace stack for numeric/data values — no Google Fonts, no CDN
Backend
- Node.js 22 + Express 5 + TypeScript
- PostgreSQL 17 (via
pg)
- nostr-tools for relay communication
Deployment
- Docker + Docker Compose (backend + PostgreSQL)
- Nginx (static frontend +
/api/* reverse proxy)
- GitHub Actions CI
🔑 Nostr Login
Supported login methods:
- NIP-07 extension — e.g. Alby, nos2x (Chrome/Edge), nos2x-fox (Firefox)
- nsec — paste your private key; it is held only in JavaScript memory for the session, never written to localStorage, sessionStorage or IndexedDB, and zeroed on logout
- Amber / NIP-46 bunker — connect via
bunker:// URI or NIP-05 identifier; also supports QR pairing with the Amber mobile app
🚀 Getting Started / Self-Hosting
Prerequisites
- Node.js 22 or newer
- Docker and Docker Compose
- Nginx (for production deployments)
1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/hroomnik007/MintRadar.git
cd MintRadar/MintRadar
The frontend and backend source live in the MintRadar/ subdirectory. The working directory for app code, Docker, and CI is MintRadar/MintRadar. The repository root holds only the README, LICENSE, SECURITY.md and repository config (.github/ with CONTRIBUTING.md and the templates, .gitignore, .gitleaks.toml).
2. Configure the backend
cp backend/.env.example backend/.env
Edit backend/.env:
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://mintradar:yourpassword@postgres:5432/mintradar
ALLOWED_ORIGINS=http://localhost:5173
With Docker Compose the backend reaches PostgreSQL by its service name postgres (the database port is not published to the host). Compose also needs POSTGRES_PASSWORD (the same password as in DATABASE_URL), either exported in your shell or set in a .env file next to docker-compose.yml:
echo "POSTGRES_PASSWORD=yourpassword" > .env
3. Build and start the backend
(cd backend && npm ci && npm run build)
docker compose up -d
The backend image is built from the compiled backend/dist/ (git-ignored), so the build must come first. docker compose up -d starts PostgreSQL and the backend API on port 3002 (bound to 127.0.0.1 only); curl http://127.0.0.1:3002/health answers once it is up.
4. Run the frontend
npm ci
npm run dev
Open http://localhost:5173. The dev server proxies /api to the backend on port 3002.
Production build
npm run typecheck && npm run build
Serve the dist/ directory with Nginx. See MintRadar/deploy/nginx.conf for the Nginx configuration of the hosted instance — it includes the security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options) and the /api/ reverse proxy block.
Private mode (MINT_ALLOWLIST)
To monitor a fixed set of mints (for example your own) and nothing else, set a comma-separated list of mint URLs in backend/.env:
MINT_ALLOWLIST=https://mint.example.com,https://other-mint.example.org
Only https:// entries count. An empty value, or a list without a single valid https:// URL, means normal mode (the public behaviour is unchanged). At every start the listed mints are added to the database instead of the built-in public seed list.
While the list is active, the backend does not:
- discover mints (Nostr and API discovery, at start and every 6 hours);
- run the Nostr reviews sync (and the reviewer profile sync that rides on it);
- publish the daily service profile;
- publish the signed health assertions (Nostr kind 30385), even if
ATTESTATION_SERVICE_NSEC is set;
- sync the cashu.info feed or its per-mint audit detail. The audit part of the Reliability Score is then neutral (its stored data, if any, goes stale and counts as neutral);
- look up mint locations (ipinfo.io: the daily refresh, the start-up catch-up and the geolocation step of the probe) or refresh mint IP addresses. Mints in this mode have no location.
POST /api/mint/submit and GET /api/mint/probe answer 403 for a URL that is not in the list, and POST /api/mints/discover answers 403 to every request.
What still leaves the server in this mode:
- Probing itself: every listed mint is contacted every 5 minutes, as always.
- The contact entries a mint publishes in
/v1/info are looked up in DNS (system resolver) to check that the domain exists.
- If Nostr DM notifications are enabled (
NOTIFICATION_SERVICE_NSEC), a notification contains the mint's hostname and a mintradar.org/mint/... link with its URL, and it is published to Nostr relays. Leave NOTIFICATION_SERVICE_NSEC unset for a private deployment.
- With
NOTIFICATION_SERVICE_NSEC set, the generic "MintRadar Alerts" service profile is also published once at start (it contains no mint data).
🔐 Security
MintRadar handles Nostr private keys and is used by the Bitcoin/Cashu community. To report a vulnerability, see SECURITY.md.
- No tracking or telemetry
- Nostr private keys are never sent to the server or written to browser storage; an nsec is held in memory for the session and zeroed on logout
- No
dangerouslySetInnerHTML; user-controlled URLs are validated before rendering
- Backend SSRF protection (DNS pinning + blocked IP ranges), rate limiting, parameterized SQL
- The backend container runs as the unprivileged
node user; the backend port is bound to the loopback interface and PostgreSQL is not published to the host
- HTTP security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy)
🤝 Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue to discuss significant changes before submitting a PR. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
🔗 Links
📄 License
MIT
App code is MIT. The bundled webfonts (DM Sans, JetBrains Mono) are open-source fonts under their own licenses, self-hosted under MintRadar/public/fonts/.
Built with ⚡ for the Cashu & Nostr community
