Also, I'm not saying this is the way things _should_ be built. I'm saying, right now, we need it. You can build your specialized database thingy later, but right now I need something that works.
Discussion
simple, and efficient
IMO "scaling to the planet" is pure hubris
a) we don't need it
b) it's not possible
if it’s not possible then how do all the big websites work
They don't work, is the thing. The website backends scale dynamically, but they have one entry point through a particular domain, and they got taken down so often, that they came up with stupid shit like captcha.
We need to have a system for n entry points, which we do, as any client can access the same database. If Alexandria goes down, switch to Chachi or Nostrudel or Njump or...
It's n entry points to n data stores. Beautiful.
I don't need to the moon, but it would be nice to see 50k concurrent users. Regardless my concern is that the software to do this IF NEEDED doesn't exist yet. The argument for Your Not Gonna Need it is fine in a field where, if the _do_ need it, the software exists to get them there. In a world where the software simply doesn't exist as a company and as a sysadmin, how am I supposed to guarantee a scale of 50k users can be done with minimal expense and down time.
We have customers that will need uptime and consistent pricing. Were targeting users that don't and won't understand how or why nostr works, but it's our job to bring it to them.