💯 high cost relays are nothing more the digital social clubs. If you want a well rub “Public” relay with the monetary spam filter set the price to one sat and cover other cost through fundraising, like NPR……..
Discussion
One sat won't cover the costs of high performance servers required to handle the load public relays will eventually be up against. The question is, how does a cheap/basically free relay raise money if it's not the client and can't push the fundraising message in front of the users? Then there's the spam problem. If a solution is forthcoming I'm all in favor. It's just a tough problem.
"how does a cheap/basically free relay raise money..."
Free relays becoming excessively (expensively) large is counter-productive to the future of the protocol. Nostr's first strength is decentralization.
Free stuff tends to bad incentives and thus bad outcomes. Like incumbent centralized social media.
That said, there's a need for some free relays: allow people to play with the ecosystem, before they get serious and put some $ into what they value.
What does a sustainable middle ground look like, that works for both users AND relay operators? Very simple...
Read for free. Publish+store for a nominal cost. But provide something equivalent to a free trial.
Let the market take care of a) pricing and b) punishing relays that get stupid with ads and other weirdness.