People call it the gossip model, but it's not like network gossip. It's gossip as in it's the model used by the Nostr client called Gossip.

Essentially anyone can use any relay that they want to use and clients fetch notes based on relays on pubkeys you're following.

You and I wouldn't need a common relay to communicate. It vastly increases decentralization.

The load would be shifted to clients, I guess, and off of relays.