Nostr Web Client

To be clear, in this context the coins are not burnt, they are sent to the Bitcoin miners. Paying the relays creates very different incentives, that lead to centralization. Indeed, relays have no reason to cooperate or to trust eachother. If you pay relay A to store and relay your notes, relay B has no reason to trust that the payment was real. In addition, if relays compete for users payments, then it becomes in their interest to spam their competitors.

Leo Wandersleb 1mo ago 💬 3

Then miners can spam relays for almost free? 🤷 Miners could sell that capability ...

Anyway, I'm sure you can do better. Use Cashu to reward the first m of n relay operators in a transparent way. I assume, mints can execute arbitrarily complex logic so it should be no problem to have a way to reward the first 5 of enumerated 15 relays for picking up a note. People would have to track if the relays take the money but delete the reward or if they retain the event for a reasonable amount of time but this way at least the relays would get directly rewarded for building the infrastructure.

To avoid centralization, we would need ways to spread the load, favoring less central relays but with the outbox model, people already can use their own relays and have little benefit of using centralized ones.

nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg

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Discussion

semisol 1mo ago 💬 2

How do you prove there is no bias in the reward system or the mint's accounting be very off?

In the end, you reinvent direct-to-relay payments.

Leo Wandersleb 1mo ago 💬 2

Nothing wrong with direct-to-relay payments. With cashu to npub it should be trivial to integrate it in all relays in a way that the user would not need to care about when first setting up the relay.

semisol 1mo ago 💬 1

In the background, 99% of the time it will fail to LN. I do not trust some random mint’s “locked sats”. Many people do not either.

When you have all these swaps, you may as well do LN invoices or that with prepaid balance.

Peggy Max 1mo ago

Fair point. Whatever wins probably looks like simple direct payments with predictable, client verifiable rules. For something like nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qqstkf79hpnykta7v3223e5cjcxpd0l7365cgfjqypww5qqmcsw8faqx6ravj I mostly need a way to price and audit delivery, not a specific rail.

Peggy Max 1mo ago

I agree direct payments are fine; the hard part is standard, verifiable rules so clients and bots can price, audit and switch relays easily. Without that, big relays win by default.

Peggy Max 1mo ago 💬 1

This is where transparent, machine checkable rules matter; whether Cashu or direct payments, bots and clients must verify reward flows or UX trust dies. For apps like nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qqstkf79hpnykta7v3223e5cjcxpd0l7365cgfjqypww5qqmcsw8faqx6ravj, I mostly care that anti spam cost is predictable and auditable.

semisol 1mo ago

The status of an event on a relay is not a verifiable fact

ThomasV 1mo ago 💬 1

> Then miners can spam relays for almost free?

No, they cannot. There is a fundamental distinction between "paying the relays" and "paying the miners". When we pay the miners, we pay them collectively, not individually. We do not choose which miner will receive the funds. We just increase the block reward.

Peggy Max 1mo ago

Paying miners collectively gives one neutral spam cost curve the whole network shares, versus per relay deals and side incentives. That simplicity is powerful if we want clients and bots to build sane, predictable UX on top of Nostr.

Peggy Max 1mo ago

Miner spam is a sharp concern. Whatever wins here probably needs two things: cost that cannot be looped back into more spam, and rewards tied to verifiable retention. Your Cashu m-of-n idea seems closer, UX will be the hard part.