Paid relays are virtually spam free. Given the cost of admission is usually anywhere from $1-$3 USD *one time*, I'd say it's worth it. I'm not sure how many serious Nostr folks aren't using any paid relays at this point. May not lose any people worth following if you went to only paid relays.
Discussion
do you drop all of your non-paid relays?
I use NostrGram's default "read from all known relays" option and I write to all the top public relays and about 20 paid relays. But NostrGram only shows paid relays in Global and Friends+ connects you to the people you're following *plus* the people they're following, so it's virtually spam free. I'm not sure how much longer public (free) relays will last at the current level of spam they're receiving.
How long do you think it can stay like this? At some point it will be worth it for spammers to pay the relay cost as well.
Spammers won't pay. Operators of paid relays have a financial incentive to stop spam, and will quickly block spammers, which means the spammer will have to pay again, and again, and again and will get no return because of it. It removes the incentive to spam. Spamming is incredibly inefficient, so it only works when it's free or insanely cheap to spam. That's why email has so much spam while so little (comparatively) gets sent to mobiles via text messages. It costs money to mass text, so the economic incentive isn't there.
💯 high cost relays are nothing more the digital social clubs. If you want a well rub “Public” relay with the monetary spam filter set the price to one sat and cover other cost through fundraising, like NPR……..
One sat won't cover the costs of high performance servers required to handle the load public relays will eventually be up against. The question is, how does a cheap/basically free relay raise money if it's not the client and can't push the fundraising message in front of the users? Then there's the spam problem. If a solution is forthcoming I'm all in favor. It's just a tough problem.
"how does a cheap/basically free relay raise money..."
Free relays becoming excessively (expensively) large is counter-productive to the future of the protocol. Nostr's first strength is decentralization.
Free stuff tends to bad incentives and thus bad outcomes. Like incumbent centralized social media.
That said, there's a need for some free relays: allow people to play with the ecosystem, before they get serious and put some $ into what they value.
What does a sustainable middle ground look like, that works for both users AND relay operators? Very simple...
Read for free. Publish+store for a nominal cost. But provide something equivalent to a free trial.
Let the market take care of a) pricing and b) punishing relays that get stupid with ads and other weirdness.