That’s funny I’ve moved more towards the opposite stance, that I increasingly worry that #nostr might not last if Holepunch based tools continue to scale like they seem to be doing now. The relay model is great for bootstrapping, but it’s insanely hard to monetize and keep sustainable with large costs.

Holepunch on the other hand doesn’t have this scaling cost. In addition, the more it’s used the better and more completely the data/messages flow. While it can still get the benefit of the “relay” sort of peer, but without any special setup or different application. It’s simply a reliable peer.

On the FOSS front; Holepunch is FOSS and has been, Pear Runtime (foundation of Keet) is dropping on February 14th and is entirely FOSS, Keet specifically still isn’t, but will on their final launch last I spoke with them.

I don’t know how the relay model works of it can be done entirely P2P… and it really seems like it is working. Public channels are coming very soon from what I hear, and that’s going to be a huge benefit to the network effect, imo.

We will see how it plays out. Either way, I think the future is bright because of both of these tools.