The more relays you have, generally speaking, the worse your experience gets because you have to make connections and write and read data to every single one of them. I had 40 about 2 months ago and it was a horrible experience for me. I had 30 a month ago and it was a horrible experience for me. I'm now in the upper teens and things are much better. This is just based on my personal experiences. You are correct though, the less relays you have, the less reach you have. That is, unless you use relays that post to multiple relays.
Discussion
Are relays that post to other relays a thing? Can we tell it to write to 100 relays for maximum readers and reach but only read from 5 other ones? What happens if you change your relays? Or if you quote tweet something from a relay I am not aware of? Lots of questions still...
If I'm not wrong the client nostrgram reads from paid relays but you can choose , by inserting other relays, to write to the relays of your choice.
I agree; having too many relays is an issue for clients. Relay like nostr.wine are good to workaround this as they themself connect to multiple relays with you only connecting to one. It is however a centralizing force as they are choosing the relay they connect to. The ideal would be a class of relays (paid likely as it would be quite ressource consuming) that you connect to and that you can configure to connect to a list of relay you choose.
Good advice and explanation. I was under the impression more relays = better experience, but this makes sense
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I'm with you on this Derek. I had over 20 and had to leave nostr open in a browser tab for a few minutes while fetching notes whenever I opened it. I now have about 10 (inc 2 paid ones) and my experience has gotten much smoother.
As for the reach, I made a backup of my notes with https://nostryfied.online/ yesterday and apparently the site broadcasts your activities to major relays in the process. Not sure how well that works but thought I'd mention it.