Long term incentives are important after the novelty of running a free relay wears off. Additionally free relays will work harder and harder as adoption arises.

Will the same incentives to sell information on users creep in? Aggregating info from zaps etc could identify those who haven't kyc'd into a Nostr client.

Server/client app that uses local storage and old notes are deleted with storage constraints. The users do keep their own note history. This enables e2e somehow

You are right, but I will there will enough people who will run relays on their costs to support the system, Bitcoin maxis early investors, etc.

Have big tech & VCs pay for relay 🤓

As I've proposed a number of times now, post links to BLOBs hosted on a free provider, instead of the BLOBs themselves.

Ideally, integrate uploading of BLOB to the most common services (google drive & iCloud) into clients.

Relays can then switch to charging per GB. Won't be a lot for those who post mostly text or links. But will punish those who hog the relays.

I fail to see how this isn't a viable idea.

I think 4chan style would fit, because most post have a value and short live. Posts that deserve to be seen for longuer time should maybe just become blog articles (doable freely with GitHub for exemple). And some people could always run archives like for 4chan.

IMO relays will have to charge even just a small amount otherwise we all will get overwhelmed by spam. I say this even while running a free relay currently (that I love). I know it won't last forever. I feel lucky so far reply bots have not arrived in my neck of the woods because I have no way to fight it. They may have arrived already, I can only spot check, no relay operator wants to play wackamole with pubkeys that can be created at a rate of thousands per second. It's not server resources that will be the problem, costs are low, it is the experience this causes for the people on the network.

Eg. Think airdrop is bad now? It's just a taste of what will arrive at some point. Depending on how popular you are it may already drastically affect you today.. It all comes from the big free relays like damus and wellorder.. imagine reply spam that replies to every single message and can't be blocked without using follows only replies (which would destroy the growth finding new connections with people).

So, I think we need to normalize paying for relays, it should be part of onboarding. Damus should make their relay paid and/or only allow their app to post to it. More smaller relays need to come online and start building connections.

One further point, running an open relay will become risky when nostr gets more popular because next thing you know, guess who will be knocking on your ISPs door asking for your shit. So adding terms of service and lightning payment seems like the best level of protection for the operator from all this stuff. It's funny how much I have to worry just running a relay that costs 8$/mo. But it's worth it, cause nostr is awesome and these are all things the early internet has been trying to solve in various ways forever, but the difference is WE have Lightning, so we should use it. ⚡

I'm happy you're thinking about relays, any suggestions or brainstorming is most welcome.

It can be like a lot of service online some relays free and have option to pay and you will get some extra stuff, and if you dont like to pay its ok. Like sigal, protonmail etc there can be ralays with adds and your than free to use them. There can be relays from foundations or compays that pay for it as sponsership etc

What happens if there are 100s relays. Will this not increase the amount of relays I need to connect to see a range of people?

Hmm, fee splitting with freemium relays. If a post gets zapped you can have a setting to split fees with the relay to keep it up, the best content persists. If you want longer or more stable hosting you can always subscribe to a paid relay, but that sounds like a good idea for general users.

Nostr.com.au is funded through the end of 2023, I’ve chucked some money at it myself but it’s probably 3/4 User funded.

Over time I see the relay model becoming more community oriented so having an Aussie relay makes sense - it’s a convergence point for people joining #nostr to follow not just more local people and content, but importantly - people active in their Timezone (a real challenge with just time based feeds).

I’m hopeful something like https://nostr.kiwi becomes a frontend for Users to converge on topics around a relay set. Things like Damus / Amethyst will probably feed off aggregated versions of these subsets.

Then we’ll have commerce type relays and other more content specific types (music, video etc) which will again bunch people by interest.

Ideally it gets to a point where Users have turnkey relays for their private groups, can join a local relay set for communities, then have higher level aggregator types for state / national topics.

The construct of #nostr isn’t there to rebuild Twitter, it could (we’ll see delay mirroring and rings and all sorts of stuff in future) but that’s not the purpose nor the killer usecase. When Users start to work out how to use it as a sovereign / uncensorable platform that’s when new models will unlock and new paths will be seen.

For example, imagine if Joe Rogan decided he was going to join #nostr to distribute pods and shittalk with ppl - what would that look like? Well he’d probably need a relay / content infrastructure all of his own, and it would spawn a whole bunch of adjacent things but they’d likely revolve around communities / personalities / topics, and people will pay (micro transactions at least) for access if it means sovereignty online.

We’re scratching the surface here of what’s possible at the moment, the flexibility of building on #nostr is going to change everything.

People may pay if the value FAR outweighs the cost. Not everyone, of course. The idea of ads disgusts me but perhaps there really is no other way?

I suppose it'd end up being both at some point. Maybe the classic pay-for-no-ads model is what happens.

You raise a disturbingly good point. I could imagine vetted relays that aren't completely open, but also do not require payment. Basically, if someone (or enough people) vouches for you, you're welcome there. Think PGP web of trust.

This could help keep spammers down and of someone os a problem, they get the boot.

The drawback is it's harder to find people with similar interests.

Perhaps an ephemeral relay could help bridge that gap?

Another option would be to take the same strategy as non-profit/community run radio stations have been doing for decades: fund drives.

It's really just a form of advertising except the only advetiser is the station itself. So if a relay can inject ads, surely they could also inject messages asking for support from the users.

I've seen a mastodon server that sells swag to help with the costs, which is basically the same thing. However they also have closed registration.

Is there something similar to the "closed registration" model for nostr relays? Allow anyone to read posts from a relay but only authenticated users can post?