The blastr model forces all relays to scale vertically. It papers over the failure of clients to properly implement gossip (or whatever else is necessary to find notes) by replicating content hundreds of times.
Discussion
So bad for relays?
It sounds appealing from a user perspective - increase reach
Unintended consequence: all relays carrying all notes will force less capitalized relays to close. This is a centralizing force.
It's a bad solution to a real problem. Better options:
- Clients should be smarter about following hints/relay lists to find stuff
- Indexing/search services could be used to help find notes (DVMs would keep this less centralized)
- Relays should protect themselves from blastr or rent-free people using AUTH. This would force devs to create better solutions for helping users select and pay for relays.
Clients should actually implement the gossip model then
They would if they didn't work without it. A band-aid prevents people from feeling the pain
I’m not bullish on gossip model on mobile yet. I’ve yet to see a web client implement it where it wasn’t substantially slower afterwards, and that would hurt worse on mobile.
Coracle is sort of slow on mobile, but not because of gossip. It's really quite simple, and easily done in a lightweight way
I will stop using the mutiny blastr when Damus implements gossip. Until then it is a hedge for what happened today.