Nostr Web Client

Damus recommends relay sets, will soon effectively default/auto-pilot relays.

Where this devolves to is most of user base will have no concept of relays, “I’ve got my client and there’s some backend something out there cool I’m on nostr f the system” - but which devolves into every other standard social platform out there.

Yes we have “portable” identities but I’m not sure portable keys model saves you here … for all intents and purposes.

The nostr vision as I initially read it was relay-centric. This seems to go the opposite way entirely.

Maybe I’m overstating all this.

But we’re in prime early phase here and this seems the time to really embrace the core nostr model not hide it all.

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Discussion

Derek Ross 2y ago

I've only been around for 5 or 6 weeks but this is something that I've always foreseen as happening. Clients are the super tool here. Relays are just dumb backends that the average user doesn't care about. They are extremely important, but the average person on the street does not care about that. Because of this, all major clients will run relays and they'll bootstrap their users into use them. We'll go down the centralization path a little bit, but users will have the choice to use other big and popular relays. I do hope that we don't go full down this path. It's still too early to tell. So, I guess the question remains: how do we make relays more important to users? How do we make relay selection important? Should it be part of every client's onboarding process? Do we advocate for that? If a priv/pub key signs in and doesn't have any relays attached to their profile, then display the relay onboarding process? This still leads to clients choosing a default relay list and most users will never go back and update those again because it's not something we've had to do in the last 20 years of social networking. It will take a long time to change that mentality.

preston 2y ago

If I run my own relay and users engage with my account, “centralized relays” shouldn’t matter? Isn’t this similar to Bitcoin where every person doesn’t need to run their own node, but they MUST have the ability/option TO run their own node? This is a serious question because I’m not sure I’ve completely wrapped my head around how relays interact with each other on Nostr…

Melvin Carvalho 2y ago

That's a good way of looking at it.

Bitcoin gives you a view on a shared global ledger, and you can run your own node to verify that ledger.

Nostr gives you ability to converse freely. Or to help others converse freely. Anyone can run a relay, but you dont have to run a relay.

The difference is, bitcoin is one single ledger state. Nostr is sharded into many thousands or millions of conversations, that can be independent of each other.

stupleb 2y ago

Ultimately things that work don't matter until they stop working in some way. Relays censoring notes for example?

Andrew 2y ago

It doesn’t have to be a choice between all users managing their relays vs. full blown relay centralization.

As others have said in different ways, we can also have a system where for the default user, “relay autopilot” intelligently figures out which relays to connect to based on the most common ones that their follows use, while also evenly distributing the load between the relays.

There can then be an “advanced user mode” for those who want to manage their relays manually.

On the relay side, multiplexing/mirroring can make it so that relays can sync with other relays.

With this system, you get a scenario where you average user doesn’t need to worry about relays, but it also prevents the need/trend of relays centralizing and keeps the load evenly distributed.

As for funding of relays, I imagine long term, they’ll be a mix of free volunteer run relay, paid relay, and free ad-supported relays.

btoole 2y ago

If one were to make clear some kind of cause and effect to the user relating to what an active selection of relays is responsible for then its kind of easy. I've been messing around on nostr for only a week or so and its not at all clear. Otherwise its pretty awesome :-)

Blake 2y ago

I can see how things could go wrong.

One issue is that today, relays are all generalists. There are no real specific topic/niche or relay tools/features to focus on hosting specific content.

A simple example could be a relay that hosts only a specific list of channel (maybe sports for example), all events not in one of those channels is rejected. Another example could be German or language specific only. Another example could be specific media types only.

Part of the issue is relays don’t know yet how they will be funded. The network is too small to carve out tiny niches today.

When relays are all generalist, the optimisation is event coverage, which can lead to silos and bubbles. A way to combat that is better content/people/topic discover tools.

Maybe just early Nostr maturity pains. Maybe a critical centralisation or bubble risk long term.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 2y ago

I think that if we want a non-technical userbase, there is only so much configuration they will tolerate. So for clients that cater to regular people like Damus, it's reasonable to hide some of it.. but not all of it. I think users should definitely choose where to post... choosing where to read from is less concerning, but if a relay starts censoring someone you'll want to find their stuff elsewhere. So there needs to be a way to dig into the settings and adjust things, but it also should "just work" for those many people who never dare dig into settings panels.

fiatjaf 2y ago

The key point is that these things shouldn't be restricted to a settings panel, they should be made an integral part of the experience.

Mike Dilger ☑️ 2y ago

Yeah. I think posts should show where they came from ideally without needing to click a pulldown. But I'm trying to figure out how to make it not take too much space at the same time.