Nostr Web Client

Yeah I’ve been thinking about that too.

I started building a relay explorer so that I could inspect what’s in a relay (and eventually query for things like communities or relay lists or other items that help with discovering more Nostr folks)

It makes me think I’ll wanna add the ability to not just inspect a relay but discover relays.

Would that aid in the effort of balkanisation?

nostr:note1yaqlvj8zr4nwk0jf77qn55jpg3efdymcz87ryfk0lzvavhz4zyus4zaf5g

PABLOF7z 2y ago

In general tools to understand relays are severely lacking, but I think that’s a byproduct from the fact that all relays are used indistinctively by clients, so all people that might query stuff about a relay solely use speed/uptime metrics, which I think is boring and barely useful.

A tool like the one you mention is downstream from clients changing their behavior.

But hey, you want to skate where the puck is going, not where it is.

The question every mildly curious person asks is “what relays should I use?”

Is a good question (currently) without an answer. It’s highly subjective. And, again, speed/latency/uptime is maybe 2% of the answer.

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Discussion

Greg 2y ago

Agreed, I’ve definitely had that same question.

I definitely wanna hack on this.

I know you can query relay metadata. And people can publish relay lists. I’m wondering if relays can currently state in their metadata some concept of “communities” that the relay is “intended for”

Something optional that just indicates what the relay’s host wants to attract. They wouldn’t boot people based on this, they’d just be raising their hand so that people can find the relay based on interests/identity/locale/etc.

If that already exists then I’ll just build a relay discovery tool that aggregates this info in a way that’s searchable by Nostr users.

If not I may try to add a NIP for it / set a pattern and see if people are interested even before a NIP.

What do you think?

Greg 2y ago

nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft do you have any additional thoughts? Gonna work on this in some spare time but would love feedback

Madelaine 2y ago

💜 this idea

rabble 2y ago

I wonder if there is some intersection between the new communities stuff and relay selection. Like a community could have a set of preferred relays just like a user profile does.

We’ve got some relay controls in nos.social around being able to post to specific relays and browse only posts on a specific relay, but it’s just a start. A set of relays is a much safer setup than single ones. I want the topical relay idea to be more of a thing.