Zap-receive address setup: how to get paid sats on Nostr

Receiving zaps is half of what makes Nostr's economic layer work. Sending is the visible part; receiving is what you care about if you post content worth tipping.

The setup is straightforward but has one common failure mode that accounts for most "my zaps aren't showing up" support questions. This guide walks through the setup and the debug.

TL;DR. Get a Lightning wallet that supports zap receipts (Wallet of Satoshi, Primal wallet, Alby, nostr.blog built-in wallet). Paste the wallet's Lightning address into your Nostr profile's "Lightning address" field. Save. Test with a small zap from another account. The zap should appear on your post within seconds.

When you are ready, grab your @nostr.blog address →

What a zap-receive address actually is

Two things packaged together.

A Lightning address. Format like an email: yourname@domain.com. This is an LNURL-pay endpoint. Senders' wallets call it to request an invoice; it returns an invoice; the sender pays it; the sats arrive.

A zap-receipt publisher. When the sender's request includes a Nostr zap-request event (kind:9734), the receiving service must, after the payment, publish a signed zap receipt (kind:9735) to Nostr relays. This is what makes the zap visible on the post.

A Lightning address without the zap-receipt-publisher feature is just a Lightning address. Money moves; no social signal appears. A full zap-receive address does both.

Wallets that support zap receipts

As of April 2026, the reliable zap-compatible wallets:

• Wallet of Satoshi. Reliable receipt publishing since early 2023.
• Primal Wallet. Built for Nostr; receipts work by default.
• Alby (hosted and self-hosted). Strong zap support.
• nostr.blog built-in wallet. Receipts publish automatically.
• Phoenix with Nostr plugin or specific configuration.
• LNbits with the Nostr Zaps extension (self-hosted).
• Alby Hub. Full zap support.

Wallets without zap support (payment works, receipt does not):

• Generic exchange withdrawal addresses (Kraken, Coinbase, etc.)
• Some older custodial wallets that predate zaps
• LND nodes without a zap-aware LNURL frontend
• Raw Lightning node invoices (no Lightning address at all)

If your wallet is not on the first list, expect zap receipts to fail.

Setup walkthrough

Concrete steps for the most common case: using Wallet of Satoshi.

1. Install Wallet of Satoshi. Pick a username; your Lightning address becomes username@walletofsatoshi.com.
2. Copy the Lightning address from the wallet (Receive screen shows it).
3. Open your Nostr client. Go to profile settings.
4. Find the field labeled "Lightning address," "LN address," or "Zap address." Paste your WoS address there.
5. Save the profile. The client publishes an updated profile event; relays propagate it.

Same flow with any other zap-compatible wallet; only the wallet-specific steps differ.

Test the setup

Never assume zaps work without verifying. Test in under two minutes.

Option 1: Zap yourself from a second Nostr identity (if you have one).

Option 2: Ask a friend to zap you 21 sats.

Option 3: Use a Nostr zap-test tool (some clients include a "test zap" feature in wallet settings).

Expected result: within a few seconds, the zap appears next to one of your recent posts with "21 sats" visible. Your wallet balance also increases by approximately 21 sats.

If the sats arrive but no zap appears on the post: your wallet is not publishing zap receipts. Switch to a compatible one.

If no sats arrive and no zap appears: the payment itself failed. This is rarer; check the sender's Lightning wallet for error messages.

The most common failure

"I zapped this person and the money arrived but no zap icon appeared."

Almost always: the recipient's Lightning address does not publish zap receipts.

Diagnostic: ask the recipient what wallet they use. If it is on the supported list, something else is wrong. If it is not, that is your answer.

Fix: the recipient changes wallets or configures their service to publish receipts. The sender has already paid; the money is in the recipient's wallet. Only the social signal is missing.

This failure mode accounts for most zap-related support traffic on Nostr. It is worth checking your own setup specifically for this issue; many users do not realize their zap-receive is broken because they see the sats arrive in their wallet and assume everything is working.

Why some services do not publish receipts

A zap receipt is a Nostr event. To publish it, the Lightning service needs:

1. A Nostr private key (to sign receipts)
2. Connections to Nostr relays
3. Knowledge of the zap-request event the sender attached
4. A process that triggers receipt publication on payment receipt

This is extra code and infrastructure compared to a pure Lightning wallet. Services that predate zaps (2022 and earlier) have not all retrofitted the feature. Services built for non-Nostr Lightning use have no reason to ship it.

The result: two Lightning ecosystems with overlap. All zap-publishers are Lightning addresses; not all Lightning addresses are zap-publishers.

Custom-domain Lightning addresses

If you want alice@yourdomain.com instead of alice@walletofsatoshi.com, you need a Lightning service that lets you use your own domain. Options:

• Run your own LNURL-pay server (LNbits with extensions, BTCPay Server, custom setup). Complete control; requires hosting.
• Alby Hub with custom domain. Self-host Alby Hub, configure a custom domain, point DNS.
• Some managed services offer custom domain pricing. Check each service's documentation.

For most users, the walletofsatoshi.com or similar suffix is fine. The custom domain is branding polish, not a functional improvement.

Combining zap-receive with NIP-05

You can have:

• Your Nostr verified identifier: alice@nostr.blog (NIP-05)
• Your zap-receive address: wildfox123@walletofsatoshi.com (Lightning)

These do not need to match. They serve different purposes (identity vs payment) and often live at different providers.

Some users prefer to match them. Services that offer both (nostr.blog offers both, for example) let you use alice@nostr.blog for both NIP-05 and Lightning. Branding cleanup, not a technical requirement.

Testing your Lightning address externally

Paste your Lightning address into a Lightning address tester. Several exist:

• lightningaddress.com has a lookup tool
• Various Nostr clients include a "verify my Lightning address" feature in settings
• You can manually test by having someone send a regular (non-zap) Lightning payment to the address

If the address accepts regular payments, the basic Lightning part works. If it also publishes zap receipts on zap requests, the zap part works.

Most users only need the basic test; the zap part is verified by the first real zap that succeeds.

After setup

Once your zap-receive address is set and tested, you are done. Zaps arrive, receipts publish, everything is automatic.

Things to monitor occasionally:

• Balance. Your wallet accumulates zaps; sweep it to cold storage or a non-custodial wallet periodically if the balance grows significant.
• Service status. If your wallet provider goes offline, zaps sent during the outage may fail or arrive late.
• Client display. Different Nostr clients render zap receipts differently; what is visible on Damus might look different on Amethyst.

All of these are minor. The typical experience is that zaps just work.

If you change zap-receive addresses later

Migration is easy. Steps:

1. Set up the new wallet; get the new Lightning address.
2. Update your Nostr profile with the new address.
3. Wait a few minutes for the profile update to propagate to relays.
4. New zaps now go to the new wallet.
5. Withdraw any remaining balance from the old wallet to the new one (or to cold storage).

Zaps sent after the profile update go to the new wallet. Zaps that happened to race the update may go to the old one for a minute or two. Negligible loss; the system is forgiving.

You can change as often as you want. The Lightning address is not a commitment; it is just a pointer.