Customizing Your Trust Settings

The Trust Formula

At its core, the extension assigns each user a trust score based on their relationship to you in the social graph. The formula considers three primary inputs:

• Hop distance — how many follow-connections separate you from the user.
• Path multiplicity — how many independent paths connect you.
• Decay factor — how much trust decreases with each additional hop.

The formula multiplies the base trust by a decay factor raised to the power of the hop count, then adjusts upward based on the number of independent paths. The result is a normalized score between 0 and 1.

Adjusting Weights

Open the extension settings and navigate to Trust Settings to find the adjustable parameters.

Hop Decay

This controls how quickly trust drops off with distance. A higher decay value means trust falls sharply after the first hop. A lower value extends meaningful trust further into the graph.

• High decay (0.7-0.9) — only your direct follows and close 2nd-degree contacts receive significant trust. Good if you want a tight, conservative trust circle.
• Medium decay (0.4-0.6) — balanced approach. 2nd-degree contacts are well-represented, and some 3rd-degree users score meaningfully.
• Low decay (0.1-0.3) — trust extends broadly. Even distant connections carry weight. Useful if you want a wide-open, discovery-friendly network.

Path Weight

This determines how much extra credit a user gets for having multiple independent paths to you. A user followed by three of your direct contacts should score higher than one followed by a single contact.

• High path weight — heavily rewards well-connected users. Someone followed by many of your contacts is almost as trusted as a direct follow.
• Low path weight — paths matter less. Trust depends primarily on distance.

Maximum Hops

Set the maximum depth the extension traverses. The default is 3 hops, which balances coverage with performance. You can increase this to 4 or 5 if you want broader visibility, but expect slower calculations and a larger graph.

Different Trust Strategies

Depending on how you use Nostr, different settings make sense.

Conservative Strategy

You want to trust a small circle and be skeptical of everyone else.

• Set hop decay high (0.7+).
• Set maximum hops to 2.
• Keep path weight moderate.

This is ideal if you use Nostr primarily to interact with people you already know and want strong spam filtering.

Balanced Strategy

The default. You trust your direct follows, give reasonable trust to friends-of-friends, and maintain some visibility into 3rd-degree connections.

• Hop decay around 0.5.
• Maximum hops at 3.
• Moderate path weight.

This works for most people and is the recommended starting point.

Discovery Strategy

You want to explore the broader Nostr network and discover new people.

• Set hop decay low (0.2-0.3).
• Increase maximum hops to 4.
• Set path weight high to still prioritize well-connected users.

This gives you a wider view but may include more noise.

What's Next?

See your customized trust settings in action by exploring the WoT Playground. Or continue setting up the extension by connecting a wallet.