nah PoW is a dead end
Discussion
Why so?
because it’s easier for spammers to PoW than normal users
That's patently false. Spammers are doing 100x, 1000x more than a normal user activity requires.
Ok, get it. You probalbly also don‘t want to punish programmers for sticking to NIP-01 only.
Why not relays charge a minimum fee for each user activity?
What about a nip that will define many nostr protocol functions in the context of the price (money is PoW), relay will inform how much users pay for what and user can decide how to filter/sort other users/posts according to account fee, n05 id fee, per msg fee etc. Client would have their default filter/sort as well.
The major question is how to adapt a mobile client to it. Phones and batteries aren't currently going to support enough work to do it like that. Phone users will have to buy work, which is basically the same as 'paid' relays.
I think #[4] 's focus on paid relays is due to his focus on the phone app.