Yeah, and i would think of a “friend request” as the linking of two private relays
Discussion
Nostr is Facebook meets twitter meets patreon
It’s amazing
Would each member of that network have to run their own relay? I'm not sure but can you not just restrict access to a relay and then give certain npub's (your friends or community) read/write access?
I'm not a nostr dev so just brainstorming here but isn't a private relay similar to a private channel on the nostr network?