Authentication

The matching engine requires authentication on write endpoints. This prevents spam and lets the service apply request ownership rules. Read-only endpoints remain public unless their contract states otherwise.

The current adapter is NIP-98 HTTP authentication. Nostr is an authentication adapter. It is not the generic wallet identity, and it is not a settlement identity.

Request body binding

For POST, PUT, and PATCH requests, the NIP-98 event includes a payload tag. Its value is the lowercase hexadecimal SHA-256 digest of the exact request body bytes. The engine calculates the digest from the received bytes and rejects a mismatch.

This binding prevents a captured authentication event from authorizing a different body during its freshness period. GET, DELETE, and requests with no body omit the payload tag.

For multipart requests, calculate the digest from the exact bytes that you send. Keep the matching Content-Type boundary with those bytes. The service rejects bodies larger than 1 MiB before it calculates the digest.

Wallet and settlement boundary

Authentication proves an authenticated request. It does not create a peer settlement channel. A settlement request separately includes the exact PAY_TO_UNLOCK capability proofs that authorize the order. Wallets use the NUT-CTF settlement protocol for those proof operations.

Error responses

Status	Meaning
`401 Unauthorized`	The authentication token is missing, malformed, or expired.
`403 Forbidden`	The token is valid, but the requester cannot act on the resource.