What are relays #asknostr
Discussion
The backbone of #Nostr!
A relay is one (of many) servers that will accept and store your notes - and other events such as your Like's - and allow anyone else to fetch it.
There is quite a talk to be had how many relays one should post to, or let alone fetch data from - but in general, you should definitively have more than just one. :)
Thank you. Do you find and “follow” relays or does it just happen automatically?
You follow people.
That said, there are clients that use the "Gossip model". See, many events (notes, likes, zaps, ...) have something called a "relay hint". This hint can be used by a supporting client to temporarily add it to your list of connected relays - thus expanding what you see.
So, depending on which relays you use, you either expand, or narrow, the amount of things you see. If, for instance, you enable the nos.lol relay, you are guaranteed to see a lot. But, another relay such as relayable.org, might have different things going on on it.
In the end, it is a bit of trial and error untill you have a list of relays you like the most - or more specifically, a list of relays that show you what you wish to see.
Remember, the basic principle of Nostr ("Notes and other stuff transmitted over relays"), is that when two people connect to the same relay, they see each other and can interact. Not everyone posts to all relays. So finding a list of relays that basically represents "the common demoninator" is what most people starting out do. If you are on Snort, you can go to my profile and click relays and see which ones I use, for instance. Then do the same on somebody else, and again. You will notice that between all of us, we might share one, maybe two relays.
Another thing to consider is that some relays broadcast and fetch notes from other relays directly - or, in laymans terms, "they synchronize". So whilst relay A and relay B might have different addresses, they might be syncing under the hood and thus are effectively the same in terms of data. :)
Is a quoted for a missing source: A relay is like a telephone wire that connects you to other users. The important thing to remember is that you need to share at least one relay with the user you want to interact with.