I had read that a paid relay gets content more engagement and reach and I don’t fully understand why. But nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6's experiment obviously displays thats difference.
I am torn how I feel about it.
On one hand, this adds costs to spam bots thus limiting their reach and probably how things should be.
On another hand, my little bot friends that bring me content, will be just that. Only for me, bc it otherwise will cost me $10 per bot per year to get them on a paid relay. I know its not much, but its not a cost I am willing to volunteer just to unlock the value for everyone else.
Some possible solutions to this:
A whitelist deal? Reach out to a popular paid relay (cough cough 🍷) and ask them for free lifetime connection if the lightning address for zaps goes to their wallet. Now they can make these content bots a part of the suite of content you get when you connect?
But this creates centralization… oi
Or maybe scratch the whole zaps go to them. I just offer the fact the content is worth something. Or that they can build their own. Maybe a paid relay should be offering the people something more. Create a competition. Relays may actually need to broker deals with content creators. Bring some capitalism to nostr.
Clients need to discover small private relays instead of relying on big relays like damus and wine
This all works well for the content consumer, but create a discovery problem for the content creators. For folks looking for reach, they have to pick the best pay walled relay. And thats not great for decentralization.
Other thoughts would be to integrate some sort of follow + connect to private relay.
For instance if I were some big shot like Lyn Alden. I would run my own relay to own my own data. Then I would connect to popular client relays for discoverability, buy my posts would only go to my private relay. And when you follow me, you get an automatic connection my relay. Maybe a one time zap to do it to prevent spam connections.
What tools do you recommend for discovery?
