it cannot be measured, its decentralized.
Discussion
I find that difficult to believe. I believe that you may not be able to precisely measure every relay in aggregate, but it seems like you could measure the major free public ones for a general idea of activity. The data are there on relays. Otherwise, I don't see how the network could function. This is evidenced by the fact that I can see certain stats for my npub. There's no reason those stats couldn't be compiled for many npubs. I'm not saying the tools are there yet, but saying it can't be done just doesn't make sense to me.
increasingly, many relays do not allow any old scraper to connect. just like japan. there is no reason to believe this trend will not continue.
when google invented web crawling did we look at its # of websites and say, these are ALL the sites on the internet? no. this is how nostr functions as well, an internet full of unknown websites.
try an experiment, post an image or something that you can see the stats for. or see how many times your nip05 has been verified (someone scrolling a feed past your posts) youd probably be blown away at 'the stats'.
This is a feature, not a bug. Sorry vc bros. This shit is organic.