I'm confused at the claim that there is no incentive structure that supports each user having multiple relays. I've found my best experience comes from having a few different relays, some paid, some free; it gives me the best chance of seeing posts without lengthy loading times.
Just listened to nostr:nprofile1qqs8dzjwlrgdzltmgmmzg50l3jpr3hxv357hj03rjut5jsfm5ugtv9gpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9rhwden5te0wfjkcctev93xcefwdaexwtcpzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0n7gf45 's take on nostr with nostr:nprofile1qqs2auxkkgfgylem580xrztp8ek5sf83s86k0vfq2feuz6y4lkhskgcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9rhwden5te0wfjkcctev93xcefwdaexwtcpzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0ks2l6t . His claim is that nostr is not at all censorship resistant because there is no incentive structure that supports each user having multiple relays.
The problem with this is that I think he is comparing relays to legacy social media services, which indeed have a very hard time creating a sustainable business model, just to keep their "single server" running. If nostr requires multiple servers, that makes the business model that much harder, because costs are much higher.
The difference is that relays have the luxury of being small. In theory it's extremely easy to run a community relay profitably, because you can run it on a $5 VPS and charge everyone $1/mo for access (or just don't even bother with a business model at this scale). This is fundamentally different from having to sustain a service that costs billions to run.
In a way, I think blastr is a schelling point for people who misunderstand nostr. It tries to force the many redundant relays to function as a single server by replicating content between them. Parker Lewis makes the opposite mistake, which is that of believing relays aren't sustainable when taken as a single unit. In that sense, I agree. But they aren't a single unit from either a data storage or business model perspective. And that's why nostr is decentralized.
Discussion
I agree, this also doesn’t take in to account that relay use cases can grow. If I subscribe to Medium, then I can access Medium articles. But say I were to subscribe to a premium nostr:npub1yzvxlwp7wawed5vgefwfmugvumtp8c8t0etk3g8sky4n0ndvyxesnxrf8q relay that content locks certain articles: this will also be able to accept all forms of nostr comms.
If nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj is correct then costs scale with user numbers, not usage or content size. Therefore paid relays can have a base case and peripheral cases that support other parts of the nostr protocol without impacting subscription profits.
At least that’s how I understand it