My point is that we shouldn’t (need to) be tethering npub identities and communities to relays because that also tends towards centralization.

Suppose that nostr.wine is the go-to relay to discuss about wine. Wine enthusiasts are going to gravitate towards that single relay because we tied a topic into it, so if that relay goes mad with data collection/goes down/whatever, you’re going to shake that community. And convincing people to use alternative wine relays is going to be harder because bootstrapping is complicated.

Silly example, but I think it gets the point across.

Another argument is that we can’t rely on an endless supply of goodwill like we’re doing. Serving media costs money, and if you are not paying a dime for the service eventually one of the following happens:

1. The relay goes down

2. The relay monetizes your metadata

And even if you’re willing to put mouth where your money is:

1. You’re tethering your npub with a specific relay (silly)

2. Payment is cumbersome (i.e. flat fees “punishes” text users over 4k vloggers

Overall, I think nostr is/can be much closer to some p2p protocols such as secure scuttlebutt, than it is to “federated garbage”, so I think we can steal some ideas from them, like I don’t need to sign an agreement upfront with a specific miner + monthly fee just to transact Bitcoin every once in a while.