Nostr Web Client

"I think the only way to truly separate infrastructure from ideology is if the infrastructure (i.e. relays) have no view of what they are relaying."

I agree, but one could make the argument that as Nostr scales, this would be untenable because relays would be crushed by spam.

But there are ways around that, I.e. Web of Trust and/or Proof of Work, that would obviate the necessity of analyzing the content of a message (and therefore being responsible for its transmission if it's "bad"), while still serving as an inhibitor of spam.

In "high spam traffic", proof of work could even be set at (say) 1 second, which would be no problem for most users.

Ben Weeks ⚡ 2w ago 💬 1

That’s where hashcash came from I believe and same principles here could be used here (using Bitcoin for relays rather than email) that it becomes uneconomical to post excessive spam. FYI nostr:nprofile1qqsqyredyxhqn0e4ln0mvh0v79rchpr0taeg4vcvt64te4kssx5pc0spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3camnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwfjkccte9emkcann9eehqctrv52em09e

That works for encrypted DM type notes. Not sure about public stuff though if the relay remained in the dark about what it’s transmitting unless the message is sharded and that sounds complicated.

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Discussion

Globe99 2w ago 💬 1

Well you're not using "Bitcoin" per se, it's just adding proof of work to messages. Coracle does this. It just uses your computer to do proof of work on a hash of your message.

No reason why it couldn't work for public notes too. Nothing is encrypted.

It's the same kind of thing that Anubis does: Force the user instead of some "captcha" to do a small amount of computational work, that's no problem if it's a human but becomes uneconomical if it's a massive web scraper" https://anubis.techaro.lol/

JOE2o 2w ago 💬 1

The only real way to make the relay not know what it's sending but not have everything encrypted is to make the operator unable to communicate preferences to the relay, which means relays in enclaves with attested runtime code meeting protocol spec, and if no proof-of-blind-enclave then not considered protocol compliant.

Globe99 2w ago 💬 1

Yeah, I mean... I wasn't thinking of the relay operator "provably" not knowing what's getting relayed, but rather just the idea of the operator having a general policy of "not caring."

JOE2o 2w ago 💬 1

The enclave approach would be close to that, the operator could obviously know what's on the relay, because anyone can query the relay, and the notes are not encrypted. But the op wouldn't be able to do anything with this knowledge, because to change the code of the relay would require breaking the attestation and being booted from protocol compliance. So code-enforced not caring, in a way.

Ben Weeks ⚡ 2w ago

Interesting!