I believe in the long run public relays won't exist anymore, they're too easy targets for spammers and sybils and other evil agents. So what relay models could exist?
1. closed relays with manual whitelisting;
2. paid relays;
3. invite-tree relays like wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com;
4. wot relays;
5. pow relays like wss://labour.fiatjaf.com;
6.
PV fiatjaf 🤙🍀
I still don't understand the idea of relays
They host all the notes and other stuff.
Relays provide the decentralization in Nostr. Instead of posting to a single server that is controlled ultimately by a single CEO, Nostr allows you to post to multiple relays (servers). So if one goes down or decides to remove your post, there are still other places for people to obtain your content.
The apps eg Primal, Amethyst etc communicate with all the relays to find the content of the people you follow in order to show it to you.
How do I get invited to pyramid.fiatjaf.con 😛
hodl relays?
how about relays that provide verification with bitcoin transactions? let's say there is a fresh address that only i know, i tell the relay: i will send 0.01 btc to address x. the relay will constantly check this address, as long as 0.01 btc is there i will be registered with the relay. in fact my npub and bitcoin address will be matched and i will be rewarded with a relay for holding bitcoin. so only those who have a bitcoin address with 0.01 btc in it will be able to use this relay.
Interesting idea.
This is interesting but too cumbersome, better to just pay the relay a fee and everybody is happier.
ofc but already volunteer people are running free relays. i think it is a good way to do free verification. i will start coding and run the relay as soon as possible. let's see how we can make the registration process easier 🚀
Non-paid, good relay options are sort of essential, no? How can you invite no-coiners to join if they have to pay and have no sats to pay with? Getting people to join is hard enough lol
I quite like the options of invite /code relays.
You could also maybe have an option to giftcode a paid relay to someone to is on zero sats or something?
You can do that on the current paid relays easily by just typing their public key on the relay homepage and paying.
But an option to automatically invite someone to some relay without previously knowing the pubkey (because they haven't generated one yet) is a very important thing to have, nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn has it as a proposal and implementation, but I never read because it was too big.
That's like saying that there will be no free paid email servers because there is too much spam
I hereby claim that there will be no free paid email servers.
Some public relays will always exist.
Personal relay, private write and public read. Keep your note always online.
Such as #cfrelay , base on cloudflare's workers. You can run your personal relay with cloudflare's free plan.
History of telecom tells a different story. By the time current relays fade, advancements will bring Relay 2.0 or better. We still have public TV channels and free newspapers in the Middle East and Africa. Sure, they'll be obsolete someday. But how long have we been saying that?
6) Relays that unlock functions over time, for example that allow only plain notes without images or links for new users, and let user pay to upgrade immediately;
I was thinking about this one, and it seems to be a very good option that must be explored. One drawback is that it may confuse new users if their posts with links or images just fail.
Yes, relay should send a welcome DM explaining the matter.
Since making relevant PoW for each note is annoying and somewhat broken, another option that came to my mind was a relay that required PoW on pubkeys instead of on event ids.
But since your pubkey is something you create only once this is a super inflexible scheme and annoying. But then I realized we could define a new event, say kind:13000, which would be just a replaceable PoW for a pubkey.
Then we could have a relay that has difficulty adjustment for the amount of PoW they require in such event, and pubkeys can upgrade their PoW as the time passes. Or relays can require a certain amount of PoW, but from a recent event, to force users to redo their PoW every now and then, and other variants of this.
This all in the context of "beginner" relays. Once you're a established Nostr accounts with followers and activity then other relays will start to open up for you more naturally without requiring PoW.
We already talked about something similar months ago, if I'm not wrong with nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn. The idea was to invite people to join Nostr and do the PoW for them using a specific kind for delegated PoW as soon as they create the account, to allow them immediate access to a PoW-restricted relay.
The difficulty adjustment and forcing a redo is an interesting option.
I think all of these ideas should be available, with the ability to combine them all. Delegated, replaceable PoW on pubkeys or event ids.
This unlocks some interesting functionalities, like being able to set a higher bar for entering a community / flagging content, the difficulty being adjusted by moderators based on the amount of resources they have. If the community sees good quality content with low PoW, they can hive-boost the PoW to raise the content to the front of moderators' eyes. Good content could stand out this way.
Higher PoW is also a nice way to kickstart an anonymous profile with no web of trust at all.
Or maybe it was not PoW but just a NIP-32 label to promote the user.
Yes fixing proof of work would be good
I think this could work
I predict option 6 will prevail above all else in the long term.
Relays to replace Facebook groups.
It's like you're trying to fragment nostr on purpose. Glowie shit. We need peer to peer
like #keet ? 😁
Probably not.
First red flag is when I looked it up I saw something about "end-to-end encryption" which means honeypot, like nostr direct messaging.
If nostr becomes P2P under its current leadership, I presume the DM feature will remain a honeypot, but the public posting features would be better. "End to end encryption" wouldn't be one of the first search results because people would be talking more about the social media posting aspect.
If nostr becomes P2P because of people like me taking over the leadership, the DM system would also stop being a honeypot and start giving users real advice about privacy and security instead of gaslighting users about "end-to-end encryption."
Second red flag is it calls itself an app instead of a protocol.
“people like me taking over the leadership” really stood out in your reply 😀 Looking forward to where you lead us
That's really nice to hear. I don't function well enough without Digit to be a big part of it if she doesn't show up, but there are others like me who care about these things too. You could be one yourself.
6. Collateral relays - auth if your account has collateral that can be swiped if you violate TOS
7. Knowledge test relays - closed relay with whitelisting based on passing some proof of knowledge.
I wonder if there’s an advertising model, where somehow a relay is free with the trade off that some posts show up in your feed. Maybe a “proof of follow” that as long as you follow an aggregation advertiser npub, you have access. Wait, that doesn’t work.
Every time I think of a solution to this, there’s always a trivial client side solution to block the ads. Even now. 🤷♂️ maybe that’s a good sign.
- ci/cd relays for the clients / applications (devs) (more likely to be DVM tho)
- nostr interoperability tests relays
- Whitelisting via invite code
- Open by default relays that ban based on negative interaction or reports
- Pay as you go vs subscription relays
I do think we need some better affordances for user feedback from relay (or use the ones we already have better). It's also hard to use weird relays in tandem with outbox because you don't want to have to bug the user about 30 different relay policies.
Pay as you go with ecash relays that gossip to one another, also paying with ecash
As hard as it might be--wouldn't there be a way to create toolsets to stop the spammers?
I'd rather keep everything open, create good tools to help manage nefarious actors, and allow anyone to run a node easily...
(Pipe dream perhaps...but if Nostr becomes centralized we risk losing the free speech aspect)
Is there a way to black list certain regional IP addresses?
6. Bluescam verified bans
Free(mium) relays existence is nostr killer feature. They must exist to give voice to everybody.
The event persistence will inevitably be the same as on the "disappering messages" feature.
Single purpose, embedded relays on hardware.
Looking into that now with nostr:npub1k03rader0vm94j5ee8fg7pc2x9xkr2phu77sljas7qu5mh8mvgvqpe8rty 's Tollgates. (Wifi routers that pay each other to build a network)
A user gets whitelisted to talk to the embedded relay to handle the ecash payment over nostr, then a (nostr) management app publishes a session event that another router-specific (nostr) app picks up to open/close the gate for the user.
Throttling malicious traffic through cost right at the source might be helpful.
Large relays can impose a cost as well, but it's difficult for them to distinguish between spam and a request that contains e-cash/has value without wasting some resources on spam. Perhaps a combination of rate limiting through PoW and hardware accelerated filters could help to reduce costs for large relays of they still face this problem.
nostr:nprofile1qqsthdwa5rs42euhnuz5xsrmmssr84hshwes7uj392vpeldj7z0zw3cppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qg3waehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hsef7u3d, I think I finally understand what you have in mind.
Large TollGate = Large Relay => traffic is already paid for by downstream TollGates
If you are sharing a Toll Number Authority (TNA) with your counterparty, you might want to share that relay with them as well.
Relays that bridge between two networks are just multi WAN TollGates 😀
Not sure if multi WAN can/should bridge the networks. Probably the relay is the only component that can live on both networks without getting a short circuit 🤣
have you explained the candycane-coded text somewhere?
ad supported relays are inevitable
Can someone please stop fiatjaf urge to destroy his own creation?
He's created his own coding language
