Imagine a global curated list of trusted relays which clients sync and enable automatically. With an option to deactivate this setting for the pros.
Discussion
I like that idea. It's all about usability + optionality.
Some people will freak out cause they see that as a centralizing element, but it takes no time at all to switch relays.
I wonder how hard it would be to become a trusted relay and how those scores would be managed though.
Remember PGP signing parties who usually took and sometimes still take place at events like Fosdem? Could be a practical approach.
I'm not familiar with that event, but I like where your thinking is directed.
On the centralized topic and building “the relay web of trust”.
Imagine relays get a score on how trustworthy they are. This could factor in an initial score given by humans (running already trusted relays) + let’s say usage per client count. The more a relay gets used the more trustworthy it is. If it gets delisted from the clients it simply fades away over time if it falls under a certain threshold (threshold: at minimum the initial value given by the humans).
Problem I see: acceptance, because it has a smell of censorship possibilities.
The part I'm still unsure of is how to actually measure relay performance. I suppose community reviews could do that, but would community members with a high trust score have weighted reviews?
It all comes down to trust at the end of the day. Like if Gigi and Odell trust a relay I would probably trust it as well.
nip66
Interesting. I need to brush up on my nips.
its like a distributed version of nostr watch. using events and monitors. anyone can be a monitor and publish their metrics/vouch for relays and their geo location/settings/features.
in the far future, it will prob drive all relay discovery using pure nostr events.
Thanks for the rundown
I would say so, too.
This would also contribute to the "personally known and therefore trustworthy" theme.