It opens a whole realm of possibilities like an internet computer. Those smart relays could be paid depending on compute time…so both win. Of course we got to be wary of bad actors.
Discussion
Why a smart relay? Why are they smart?
🤷♂️I just came up with it on the go. I assumed it being able to execute simple code makes it better than ‘dumb relay’ that only stores data. Another use case I imagine is- say someone wants their note to go viral. They can attach 5000 sats to it with a code that pays 100 sats to everyone who retweets it with a portion going to the relay that executes the code! This allows advertisers to pay users directly.
Dumb relays is what make nostr tick 😅😅
What would making relays a first class citizen look like? I’m hugely in favor of a swarm of small, dumb relays. Really helps decentralise and add censorship resistance
Surfacing interactions with them to the user level and make them top of the knobs a user plays with.
But for that to make sense they need to differentiate. Chicken and egg problem.
But in this case, relays can’t do much to differentiate/Balkanize if clients don’t provide more levers to the user. 
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
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.
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?
nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft do you have any additional thoughts? Gonna work on this in some spare time but would love feedback
💜 this idea
why doesn't the code execute in client side?