In the long run, we’d like it to be as easy as possible to start new relays. We need there to be no moat. That way, the efforts of the state or other powerful entities to capture and shackle the biggest relays will be fruitless, bc new ones will immediately pop up, and the market will hopefully have the tools to recognize quickly which ones have been captured and respond appropriately.

I imagine in a world like that, the business of running a relay would be pretty close to break-even.

And in a world like that, it might not be a good thing for relays to require building up a brand. Bc branding takes time and effort and expense, which would work against what I said above.

If we can ever get decentralized web of trust to live up to its potential, then our WoT will help us know which pieces of info (and/or which content authors) are worth paying for. In which case perhaps relays will become like informational wholesalers. Alice says she’ll pay x sats for whoever can deliver a file with a particular hash, and that becomes the relay business model. Maybe a few sats for a chunk of files. Whatever is enough to cover the costs of the relay.