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.