what’s the benefit of a user paying for a relay?
Still learning…
Discussion
Less spam (in global), better performance , and (possibly) longevity. It could make the relay sustainable to run for the operator.
Are these relays really sustainable with a one time payment, small fees model? Or is everyone just getting a discount really right now? Can this fee model scale? I am just curious since you are running a service and would love to learn how the actual numbers look!
I started yesterday with the paid relay so we will see. I’ve run a smaller public one for a while and it is already getting slow and I don’t want to upgrade it.
I think (if we succeed) everyone is getting a massive earlier adopter discount right now. Just thinking about it logically $1-3 per user lifetime is too low if they maintain a reasonable amount of activity.
Either the one time fee would have to go up drastically (10x?) or maybe annual/monthly subscription. Some friction with that and the push only nature of lightning though, less payments might be better.
Different relays will come up with different strategies as they grow. I do think the early paid relays today (even tiny fees) will feel compelled to stick around for their users.
To answer your main data question: I just don’t know yet. I’ve been paying a lot of user admission invoices for them to promote it and spread the word. I’ll need a couple months at least to have any idea of how it does without that effort.