Cashu team builds an Internet Mint Finder on Nostr

Picking a Bitcoin ecash mint has often felt like choosing a restaurant in a city with no Yelp. You know places exist, but finding them and judging them is mostly up to word of mouth.

Calle, the pseudonymous physicist and key figure behind the Cashu ecash protocol, is working with a team on a fix. The project is called the Internet Mint Finder, or IMF, and it aims to list Cashu mints that have been announced or reviewed on Nostr.

The initiative was announced on October 27, 2026. Yes, the acronym is IMF. No, it has nothing to do with the International Monetary Fund, which would probably prefer it that way.

What the Internet Mint Finder actually does

Cashu is an open-source Chaumian ecash protocol built for Bitcoin. A “mint” is the service that issues ecash, so every Cashu user ends up relying on one.

The IMF pulls its data from Nostr, the open, decentralized messaging network that has become popular in Bitcoin circles.

The directory is built on NIP-87, a recently drafted Nostr specification. A NIP is a Nostr Implementation Possibility, essentially a shared rulebook so different apps can understand the same kind of message.

NIP-87 defines two standard event types. Kind 38172 covers mint announcements, while kind 38000 covers user reviews.

Mint operators can post a standardized “we exist” message, and users can post standardized feedback. Any app that speaks NIP-87 can then read both and assemble a picture of the landscape.

The team has not shared a launch timeline. It also has not yet detailed which features will set the IMF apart from tools that already exist.

A growing toolkit around Cashu

The IMF is not arriving in an empty room. Cashumints.space, another community project, already indexes mint information and aggregates reviews.

As of October 5, 2026, Cashumints.space reported tracking 63 mints. Of those, 34 were online, and the site had logged 962 reviews.

The cashu.me web wallet has also moved in this direction. It now offers mint discovery and ratings based on user-generated Nostr data, a recent upgrade to its interface.

Why mint discovery is a bigger deal than it sounds

For Cashu, the mint is the point of trust. Users hand their Bitcoin to a mint in exchange for ecash, so knowing which mints are live and how others rate them is not a nice-to-have.

A standardized format like NIP-87 changes the dynamics in a quiet but meaningful way. Reviews posted once can surface across multiple apps, including the IMF, cashu.me, and whatever comes next.

There are open questions, of course. Any review system built on open participation has to handle low-quality or manipulative feedback, and the IMF will be judged on how well it separates signal from noise.

The other test is differentiation. With Cashumints.space already tracking dozens of mints and hundreds of reviews, and cashu.me offering Nostr-based ratings, the IMF will need to show what it adds beyond another window onto the same data.

On the market side, there is no token attached to any of this. Cashu operates without a traded asset of its own, so the IMF is not a trading story.