Replying to Avatar fiatjaf

I think it is possible to do an adapted version of the Signal protocol using a special kind of relay and a special kind of message. The targeting and querying wouldn't use public keys, but single-use blind tokens that the relay servers wouldn't be able to associate with any entity (unless, of course, to an IP, but we can work around that later) but would still be able to account for, charge money for or use other forms of whitelisting.

This wouldn't be Nostr properly, instead it would be a different protocol, very similar to Nostr, but optimized for private communication. This way Nostr can be left as a public broadcasting service, which is what it excels in.

Anyway, if you have an idea of how this could work please talk about it or do something (as I said, I have a rough idea of how this could work, but it's not fleshed out and I don't give it a very high chance that I am correct on my hypothesis).
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mope 2y ago

I agree; also I'd add that rather than broadcasting the DM on multiple relays the user should have only 1 selected (in their NIP-0) for recieving messages to. PUSH only, don't store the content on the server after it has been recieved (like Whatsapp, not like telegram). Making it economic to host these relays for free.

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mope 2y ago

Also I'd add, allow a binary node to node Noise communication protocol (even Wireguard is fine), so I can message someone via my own node who forwards it on to their selected node on my behalf. So I don't leak IP metadata when communicating to someone on a unique node. It can be done without Noise/binary but it considerably improves scalability to do it this way. Can be simple still - super simple but scalable would be Wiregard + BSON (binary json)