I will post this answer again that I think is relevant to the cash server approach
It is no different then twitter.
Discussion
The "it's no different from Twitter" is a gross overstatement, though I do sympathize with Will's view. I certainly prefer to select the relays I read from and have the client I am using pull notes from those relays directly.
That said, I also understand Primal's choice to use a caching relay for the sake of optimizing for new users who barely understand what a relay is, let alone how to select ones that will achieve their goals. New users don't yet HAVE goals they want to accomplish in their selection of relays.
On Twitter, you don't own your identity. On Nostr, you absolutely do, even on Primal. Yes, Primal COULD put fake notes that appear to be from your npub, but the fact that they weren't actually signed by your nsec would be immediately apparent when they cannot be accessed from any other client, and cannot be rebroadcast out to any other relays.
On Twitter, you cannot post your tweets to any server other than Twitter's centralized server. On Primal, you absolutely still can maintain your censorship resistance by posting to multiple relays, because relays reject notes that aren't signed by the correct private key.
On Twitter, you can only read tweets that were posted to their centralized server. On Primal, you may only be able to read from their caching relay, BUT those aren't just posts that were written TO their relay. You are still seeing posts that were originally written to a wide variety of relays.
On Twitter, you are a slave to their proprietary algorithm. On Primal, you get to choose your algorithm, or create one that suits your own needs.
Now, do I think this is ideal to only read from a caching relay? Absolutely not. Do I think Will has a lot of good points about why this is a compromise of Nostr's values? Yes, I do.
But it's not "no different from Twitter" by a long shot.
The "no different from twitter" is a bit of an exaggeration perhaps, at least on some aspects of Nostr, I agree.
I am personally a big user of primal as well despite it having centralised tendency.
But we must be open about it and clear and voice our concerns so that the devs steer development in the correct direction.
And by the way the "use other clients" is not a good argument, if primal becomes the biggest client no one will build other clients. What we should do is use the decentralised clients and improve the protocol for better experience instead of going centralised.
Wait... "Use other clients is not a good argument," but "what we should do is use the decentralized (other) clients"?
I don't share your concern that "if Primal becomes the biggest client no one will build other clients." Primal simply does not and will not ever do all the things that users want. They are absolutely optimizing for the newbie.
Thing about that is newbies don't remain newbies for long. Eventually they want to try other things, or they see a note quoting some event kind that Primal doesn't display and they ask how they can see that note.
There will be other clients that do some things better. Primal doesn't have live-streams, but Amethyst and noStrudel do, and zap.stream is specialized to ONLY that kind of content. Same thing goes for other types of content, such as photos. Olas is optimizing for an image feed, so is slidestr.net in a different way. Different users are going to prefer each approach. Amethyst has integrated the same event kind as Olas, but I happen to prefer Olas' UI for browsing images over that of Amethyst.
The point is, different clients will ALWAYS have their strengths and weaknesses, so there will almost certainly be a few major clients on each platform (iOS, Android, Desktop, Web) and then a MASSIVE number of specialty clients that focus on a particular type of content or use-case.
Even if Primal gains (or maybe has gained?) the largest user-base by simply being the easiest to use, other clients will still have a decent market-share because they provide other things users value that Primal has opted not to include.
I am not sure it is true that people will move away when they are not newbies anymore, people tend to stick to the first app they use.
Now imagine if primal has a big chunk of the network and it is taken down by gov, what will this do to Nostrs reputation? I am not sure myself maybe the damage won't be big because people will just download a more decentralised client, but then why not use a decentralised client from the start?
Why not just focus on the decentralised direction and improve that? If we can't create a good user experience that way we might as well just give up.
Ummm, most Nostr users I am aware of use a plethora of clients on the daily. One of the biggest selling points of Nostr is specifically the fact that you can take your identity, your content, and your social graph with you to ANY client. So, while there are probably a contingent of folks who ONLY use Primal, I would wager that is a very small subset of Nostr users overall, because one of the reasons we came to Nostr in the first place is because we can use our Nostr ID to sign into all sorts of different clients.
You point about Primal potentially being shut-down very easily, and what that might do to Nostr's reputation, is definitely a valid one. I think that would be the case if any major Nostr client was shut down, though. The fact that Primal only reads from its single caching relay just makes it the most likely first target.
That said, I don't see that as much different than the Bitcoin FUD we used to have surrounding a majority of the hash-rate being located in China. "China could attack the network." "Could you imagine what would happen if China banned mining? We may never find another block because the difficulty would be too high to get to the next adjustment!" "What would that do to Bitcoin's reputation?" Well, China did ban mining, and it did have a short-term effect on Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin is stronger than ever because of it.
I think the same would be the case with Primal. Some people would leave Nostr over it. Others would migrate to other clients and complain that the UX sucks compared to what they had. But a year later those who left will be shocked that Nostr hasn't died after all, and is actually stronger than ever.
I also agree with you that it would be better for users to focus on the more decentralized clients. That's why I don't use Primal much at all. I mainly use #Amethyst, or #Coracle, or #noStrudel, or #Ditto, or... The list goes on and on.
Primal is making a trade-off. Users who are on Primal should be aware of that trade-off. Absolutely agree with that. I also think that caching services may become more and more necessary for UX as Nostr grows. Heck, one of my favorite relays to read from (nostr.wine) is effectively a paid caching service. As is any web-of-trust relay. Primal's may be the only major one we know of right now, but I think that list is going to grow by necessity. Trying to read from 100 different relays on-the-fly to get all of your friends' notes is going to be a bad time, let alone discovering new content.
I don't think that means we have failed, either. So long as we are writing to multiple relays and CAN fall-back to those relays when the caching relay is unavailable, I think we'll still be able to deliver on the promise of a censorship resistant and decentralized social internet and also deliver outstanding UX along with it.