I started yesterday with the paid relay so we will see. I’ve run a smaller public one for a while and it is already getting slow and I don’t want to upgrade it.

I think (if we succeed) everyone is getting a massive earlier adopter discount right now. Just thinking about it logically $1-3 per user lifetime is too low if they maintain a reasonable amount of activity.

Either the one time fee would have to go up drastically (10x?) or maybe annual/monthly subscription. Some friction with that and the push only nature of lightning though, less payments might be better.

Different relays will come up with different strategies as they grow. I do think the early paid relays today (even tiny fees) will feel compelled to stick around for their users.

To answer your main data question: I just don’t know yet. I’ve been paying a lot of user admission invoices for them to promote it and spread the word. I’ll need a couple months at least to have any idea of how it does without that effort.