Trying to dust off my nostr relay game a bit. I'm currently only using free relays. Are paid relays still a thing, and do you notice a big improvement in terms of reach and/or discoverability when using them? If so, which?
Discussion
Never used paid relays. I don't know if it's really useful.
At some point it seemed they would be a walled garden protecting their users from spam: you could only listen to events coming from paid relays, thus preventing spam because you would only see what other paying users broadcast. Could call it Nostr Blue 😅
But spam doesn't seem to be so much of an issue (yet?), and it is at least not worse here than on Twitter. What I'm wondering still is whether it improves reach, since there maybe users who mostly listen to paid relays.
I went back to the most popular one.
And to be honest I haven't seen or felt any different.
I am not going to renew. My subscription with the relay. Because it did not change my feed at all. Relays are gonna be fun. When a relay creator dedicates their relay to a specific topic like cars or fishing or hiking or flowers.