Yes, early days, I don't see a benefit or need to paid relays when I can run one myself. (once I learn how). Is the goal self hosting ? and therefore own all your own data?
Discussion
Lots of options, No right answer. I do some paid in part to support the infrastructure of Nostr. Nothing is free!
Thanks for you reply and opinion. Would running my own node be better for the infrastructure that paying someone else ? or is it about how powerfull the node is?
My Nostr relay running on my Umbrel node only seems to backup my notes and interactions with others. Like reposts, and every 🤙 I send… not sure if there is more functionality…
Running a large relay is expensive. Running a small personal one is not!
All depends on how many people are reading and writing to your relay. If you’re serving a large amount of concurrent connections, you will need a powerful server and unmetered bandwidth.
Good question, I think powerful nodes help more people and small nodes are more for your own use or your friends and family, but that is an early take.
I don’t think it’s the same concept as Bitcoin nodes validating transactions where more is always better
How do others connect to your small node? And what does that mean if a small group, let’s say, watch dealers on 47th street, on a node together, that means they can see each others posts and that others can’t?
You could create a private relay today (controlled via accessing IP) that would work like that today.
There is a protocol spec for client authentication that would allow you to do this without IP restrictions and instead based on an authentication token but it has not been widely implemented yet.
Don’t understand that. Sorry 😢
Basically yes it can be done today in a more difficult way. It will be easier to have private (but shareable) relays in the future.
I bring up the watch dealer examples because during the pandemic I resold vintage watches. Oftentimes we would trade dealer-to-dealer and wire money to one another, other times, have to spend an afternoon invoicing an chasing clients.
I since purchased key domains in the bitcoin + watch space, and could facilitate trusted dealer-dealer conversations via private/secure member paid relays… trade deals, and instant international settlements via bitcoin. It could be a great system.
Basically I have light bulbs going off in my head of things I want to create.
Currently stuff like this is gone on private telegram groups… but the zap feature is a game changer because I can post something with and asking price, and sell it faster 💨
Self hosting is great too. Paid relays are more about spam protection, sustaining a relay operators expenses (so that they will actually care about uptime and keeping your data), and joining a community.
Right now in my opinion the ideal setup is a mix of both (that’s why we created the filter, to bridge the gap).