so, using https://nrcheck.tigerville.no, it looks like 3 in 4 paid relays are working:

wss://nostr.wine

wss://relay.orangepill.dev

wss://nostr.plebchain.org

one seems to not ever publish anything despite me paying them:

wss://eden.nostr.land

it's among the first relays listed in most clients, but i'm not seeing posts from it in the wild all too often. maybe it's just really slow and all the clients time out on it?