In what way is nostr guarded against bad actors by PoW?
Discussion
Your reputation is based on the work you put in. How are you contributing to making this a better, stronger network that can remain decentralized and resist censorship? I can choose to enter a walled garden where certain forms of work are required to get a message through, however, a proliferation of paid relays does not contribute to the goals of decentralization and censorship resistance. There is always conflict inherent to the system that can only be resolved in a free market economy, which we finally have thanks to Bitcoin and Nostr.
Paid Relays will be with us in some shape or form for as long as they cost money to build and run.
Indeed, a proliferation of 10,000 paid relays in places that allow freedom of speech is very decentralised and censorship resistant.
The problem there is "finding the relays I need", but that's probably just a tools issue, based on Location, Moderation Policy, Fee structure, Community Served by the Relay, Language "Welsh relay", that sort of thing.
I personally suspect that relay size will end up following a power law in which a lot of small relays serve to keep the Google/Apple/Amazon Relay honest, in that if the big relays get too rule bound, people just en mass sort of pick a smaller one and go there.
It will be interesting to see what kind of network topology emerges and what policies relays will adopt WRT to aggregating messages from other relays.