Client Monopoly is a biggest threat to Nostr protocol. Diversify everyone and be ready!
Discussion
I’d say relay monopoly is the bigger threat
This also
I can't really disagree with that, I hope gossip model can reduce that threat on some extent.
Of course, client monopoly can lead to relay monopoly, if the biggest client does a bad job of relay diversification
Both are just as terrible
Curious to see how incentives develop as nostr matures. I’m not very technical when it comes to software, but I imagine there will be management needed from at least a fairly substantial number of nostriches. Would like to map it all out sometime soon.
That’s the problem, clients shouldn’t be responsible for relay bootstrapping!
Finding relays from trusted mutuals is fine (even if that doesn’t scale extremely), but clients bootstrapping users with a default set of relays is a huge central point of failure.
We’ll release a great solution to this when we complete the decentralized GitHub.
More full-nodes and more relays, not more near-identical Twitter clients. 🤦♂️
Clients are an interesting thing. I run quite a few, and I've noticed some patterns.
* Damus seems to run the cleanest, but I'm on a M1 iPad so maybe not a fair comparison.
* Amethyst feels best when talking to international friends because the on-device translation works really fast on a Pixel.
* Iris is the most consistent experience on the web for me, at least in terms of loading the same messages I saw on my other clients, and loading pfps, and quoted notes, etc.
* Snort is my favorite UI (and I'm a paying supporter, because I love the work Kieran is doing) but struggles to resolve pet names, etc on my computer.
* Gossip tends to just randomly miss stuff regardless of how many relays I allow, even if I'm following someone, but it's a beast and runs quiet.
I've noticed native clients tend towards reproducible timelines vs web kinda being hit or miss. I've noticed web clients make my Ryzen 5800X with 32GB of RAM wanna cry.
These are all personal experiences and not reflective of overall user experience.
Honestly, I feel like I'm not sure I'm even getting the entire Nostr experience unless I'm switching between at least three clients, so yes, try lots of clients! ♥️