Just published a new blog post: POW vs Micropayments for fighting spam on Nostr.
Discussion
“web-of-trust is the best baseline for eliminating spam”
Thank goodness. So glad you said that.
“but it does need a complement in order to introduce newcomers to the network”
What about trusted / recommended accounts? Right now, these are hard coded in apps, but they could theoretically come from relays as well.
Is trust a relay problem more than an app problem? probably…
Newcomers can currently find people to follow, but if their notes and replies are locked out of the web of trust because they have zero reputation, that's a problem. In most cases, hopefully they'll have a mutual follow from the friend who introduced them to nostr, but some people will come to it with no connections. They need to be able to buy their way in to a paid #newcomers channel (or whatever), or do POW on their key to get promoted as someone worth following.