Running a high profile relay that breaks even is hard. First puravida.nostr.land and now eden.nostr.land will soon be shutting now. I don't know about you all, but I'd be willing to pay more than a few thousand sats as a one time fee. That model is not sustainable.
Discussion
There are definitely a lot of problems here… I somehow completely missed the puravida announcement and I am extremely active on nostr.
I agree, hopefully the community can come up with better models for users to support relays and also better tools for users to migrate when they need to.
I don't know if there was a puravida announcement. However, I talked to the former relay operator and got the details on it last week. It's all about sustainability. They aren't breaking even.
Well we have to pay for the service then! What costs the most when running a node?
i don't know... they're paying hundreds of dollars a month.
That’s definitely not sustainable with a one time payment.
There should be a zap button in the nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955 relay settings to donate & support
Why dont they either ask for more or dont mix ads into the feed (might require co-op with client app)?
They could have done that, if sustainability was the main reason. I don't know if that's the case.
One time fee for accessing something forever will never be a sustainable business model.
absolutely. this is why we have continued to talk about subscription and pay per note models for relay.nostrplebs.com
I am unable to pay any paid relay that uses ZBD. Only the wine relay which runs their own btcpayserver. I wonder if I'm the only one? I wonder if that is part of the problem.
i've never heard of this before. why? what's the issue? you can't pay any ZBD invoices, even from ZBD users? are you using your own node? maybe it's a channel issue?
https://nostr.milou.lol/invoices
I can't even load the page to get an invoice. Cloud flare host error. VPN, no VPN, multiple browsers, wifi or LTE, pihole on our off, windows, Linux, android, all the same.
Eden.nostr.land was one I tried and had the same issue. Eden usually failed after I put in my npub to request an invoice. Today with milou I can't even get the page to put in my npub.
I posted about this once but got zero engagement. I tried with multiple relays at multiple times over weeks always with the same result.
I'd be willing to pay extra as well or sign up for a subscription model to a well run relay.
Has puravida.NOSTR.land shut down? I notice I wasn’t connecting recently but missed seeing it was shutting down. 🤙🏻
I think it would have to be a subscription model personally, I don’t know how reasonable everyone would consider that idea
for a newbie can you explain why they’re shutting down?
I'm not sure why Cameri is shutting down Eden, but Puravida shut down because the owner left Nostr a few months ago due to having to leave Nostr for work reasons. She kept Puravida running as long as possible but she also mentioned to me that it wasn't breaking even any longer.
Tbh I don't think that will fix the issue either. Running a server implies monthly costs. So why not have a monthly subscription fee, which is lower than the one time only fee model currently employed by all servers?
A relay management panel for purchases with Lightning could be useful here to pay for relays, hosting and other services all in one go. Would it run into conflict with "in-app" purchase policies?
clients with this built in would be huge, but yes, it's an in-app purchase. PWAs solve this.
I agree, would be great! Amethyst could with the F-Driod and Obtainium releases. The Damus 'Freedom Edition' on desktop could as well. Gossip and other desktop clients could as well, which could eventually also be available on postmarketOS and mobile. Play Store versions and Apple App Store releases could give notice about the missing funtionality and the alternative versions available (if they don't already). I'm not a huge fan of PWAs, performance seems suboptimal, limited functionality, storage and sessions are typically shared (XSS).