Nostr Web Client

This framing of outbox vs proxy relays on separate sides is disingenuous at best.

My main criticism of outbox model has always been that it will REQUIRE intermediaries to be usable on most clients if nostr users spread out across more relays.

If all I wanted was for the “smart proxy relays to win” I wouldn’t bother having these conversations.

The fact that any criticism of outbox model is received as “you must have another agenda” or “you must be too lazy to update your client” doesn’t help convince anyone that it’s a good idea. nostr:note1hpug30zkz2j43eh5yvg389v4m60y4jq8nt43zytqeantp2q0rkpq790wvs

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Discussion

Andrew 1y ago

> it will REQUIRE intermediaries to be usable on most clients if nostr users spread out across more relays.

Why is that?

Mazin 1y ago

Most clients can’t open a couple hundred websockets at once. Browsers are even hard capped.

So yes - it works ok with the current number of relays and distribution of users across them. But if we actually succeed in growing nostr and encouraging users not to be on the same handful of relays, then what?

hodlbod 1y ago

No one is saying we should "encourage users not to be on the same handful of relays". I at least think the ratio of relays/users will *decrease* because your point about performance is directionally correct. The outbox model still needs to work though, because *if* someone is on a personal relay, they should still be discoverable with little to no penalty.

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Mazin 1y ago

People are absolutely saying we should randomize relay starting lists and start users on “small” relays so

I’m not sure why you aren’t hearing/seeing that - it’s pretty common rhetoric on my feed.

I certainly agree that we need a scalable solution to finding user events in a (reasonably) censorship-resistant fashion.

hodlbod 1y ago

Yeah, I see it too, but I don't think most of those people know what they're talking about. The four of us who went on CD last week seemed pretty well in agreement about that. I do think some randomization is good, among the top 30 or so relays (Primal is adding this, and it's good). But that's not the same as true randomization across the whole set of available relays, which would be an awful idea for several reasons.

Mazin 1y ago

So…can we agree some people are talking about randomizing relay lists now?

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hodlbod 1y ago

Haha yes ok you win. I thought Primal was going to be more conservative and base selection on on some quantifiable relay characteristics. A floor of 100 relays is definitely higher than it needs to be, and will put stress on outbox-enabled clients. I think we can still handle it by rotating through connections, but it definitely will be interesting.

Andrew 1y ago

> 10-20 huge hubs and a long tail of 10k relays

Ironically this sounds pretty similar to the Bluesky/AT Protocol model where the indexers are the hubs and the instances are the relays.

hodlbod 1y ago

Is it? I thought AT replicated everything to all instances. That's definitely not what I have in mind here.

fiatjaf 1y ago

There are no instances in AT, there is just one big server ran by the Bluesky Corporation. They used to call it "BGS" (Big Graph Server) but now they call it "Relay".

The Bluesky marketing is great at confusing people by giving them a false impression of decentralization: they let you run your own personal datastore with just your posts, and then the BGS will fetch your posts from that, no one else will connect to it, but that is just an unnecessary intermediary between you and the BGS, you could just publish directly to the BGS and I don't see why you would not do it.

Andrew 1y ago

well they’ve succeeded in confusing me then haha

KingArctan 1y ago

Platform with extra steps.

fiatjaf 1y ago

In a real world follow list example with 850 users 21 relays are used.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 1y ago

I don't think fiatjaf is implying any bad intent or agenda at all. Even with Twitter, the intent was always good (afaik), but the natural way things naturally progress and change gave us the outcomes you are familiar with.

Also, your 2nd paragraph sounds to me like "if nostr users don't centralize, they will be REQUIRED to centralize." You might want to explain that a bit more.

fiatjaf 1y ago

I think he is implying that a dedicated backend will always be necessary because a user computer cannot open a thousand websocket connections, but he could be more explicit and I think all the assumptions are broken there.