Beginner Questions: How do Relais work?
If I am connected to only one relay, do I only get a glimpse of the nostrverse? Like looking through one window of a house?
Or is it all about trust, meaning I’m getting all my info through one contact and so I should connect to several Relais or maybe even run my own?
Can Relais be compared to bitcoin full nodes?
nostr:npub1kuy0wwf0tzzqvgfv8zpw0vaupkds3430jhapwrgfjyn7ecnhpe0qj9kdj8
I recommend you to use some paid relays, thus you get completely rid of the spam and better content in general imo. Best relay to get a lot of content from only one single relay migh be https://docs.nostr.wine/filter/readme
Hmm is content behind a paywall the future that nostr is headed towards?
Relays are just servers, running them costs money. Once #Nostr gets bigger (more data) relays will need to find ways to cover their costs. So everyone can decide if they want to use free relays where they will become the product or join paid relays for better service.
Paying up front and not knowing if one will use a service seems outdated. Would it be possible to enroll for the relay (for minimal fee) and afterwards pay appropriate price for the specific content (e.g. a few sats for commenting text, more sats for pictures). Just an idea 😇
so typically a distributed twitter?
No, Twitter owns your identity and can edit/delete, shadow ban you. This is not possible with #Nostr because you own your identity, no else has access to it. Moreover #Nostr is a protocol and not just a platform. It's much more than #Twitter. With every new client, relay, app the whole network gets stronger and you're free to use any app while not losing any data.
correct, i just realized the paud relays would be majority bot free making it better for human interaction...
The architecture of Nostr is designed so that you as a publisher/consumer don’t have to rely on any given relay to carry your messages. Each relay is something of a “window” into part of what’s happening on Nostr. The architecture is resistant to censorship by any given relay. So if you publish to a handful of relays they can all “compete” to serve your messages to people who are interested in reading them.
Relays serve a very different function to bitcoin full nodes. I wouldn’t compare them too closely. Though you may choose to run your own relay and can ensure that your relay always carries your messages.
I’m configured to connect to 15 relays at the moment. You can experiment, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it when you’re first getting started.
I’m happy to try to help if you have any more questions!
Thanks for explaining! So…let’s say I want to check if my friend “Dave” is on nostr. On other platforms he goes by some handle “@CoolDave”. I go ahead and type variations of his name/handle into the search field but get no results that appear to be him.
Is it still possible that he is active with his name/handle, but I can’t find him in “my” part of nostr?
How closely would our relays have to be located (direct connection, 1 hop, several hops) for him to appear in my search results?
If he sends me his public key via text, will I find him no matter how “far” we are apart?
If he sends you his public key (npub) you can pretty reliably find him. Depending on your client it might automatically check for relays where he is already publishing and add it to your list of relays on Nostr.
For search/namespace stuff I usually use https://nostr.band. There are various services that try to aggregate all the people/notes they can find across all the relays they know about.
Cool, thank you!
Question concerning storage space in the network: I understand the pure text communication is very efficient and relays can provide this with use of very little resources. But since there are no centralized servers, all data has to be provided by the relays.
What about pictures and videos? If I start spamming loads of data, will relays start banning me at some point?
Does anyone who runs a relay need to set and adapt the rules that his or her relay follows?
Thank you for your time 🙃
