So it seems relays don’t relay.

i.e. they don’t relay messages to each other. If you don’t share a common relay, then you are unable to communicate.

It seems you need to pay to “write” to large relays like nostr.wine in order to attain the reach.

If you just read from the large relays, then your notes won’t travel.

relay.damus.io has been allowing free writes, but due to demand, has had to throttle writes from unsubscribed npubs

I believe NOSTR is inherently trending towards a centralised paid relay model, which was not the concept. Paid, yes, but not centralised.

Still researching, but these are my early thoughts.