Nostr Web Client

I personally use a desktop computer over a starlink interface and I follow about 170 people. Right now I'm connected to 31 relays, which is far fewer connections than this computer can make. So it is working great for me.

But I recognize that younger people tend to only have a smartphone and fewer people use desktop computers. And I recognize some people want to follow thousands of other people. That is a difficult thing to make work well in a direct fashion under the outbox/inbox model.

But it can work indirectly. One solution is using a client proxy (which nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn and I speak about briefly on his podcast that will be coming out in a week or so) which is basically an internet server which acts like a client on your behalf on the outside, and presents like a relay on the inside so that your mobile app only needs to make one connection. That can be done right now with zero changes to the NIPs, using the inbox/outbox model, and it solves that mobile phone problem far better than (1) blasting events everywhere, or (2) everybody centralizing on the same relays. Sure, most people won't be running their own client proxy, they will sign up as a customer to a client proxy service. But they can easily move to a different one if the one they are using starts censoring them. And us hacker do-it-yourself types retain the option of running direct.

nostr:npub18kzz4lkdtc5n729kvfunxuz287uvu9f64ywhjz43ra482t2y5sks0mx5sz

pjv 2y ago

That's funny. I also mostly use a desktop over starlink and use gossip (though I happen to be composing this on Amethyst on my phone at the moment) and I currently follow fewer than that so yeah, for me there is no performance bottleneck, no battery issues.

I also run a personal relay based on strfry with my own minor modifications and I very much like the idea of client proxies. But I also grow most of my own food. And while friends who come over admire my garden and tell me how much they'd like to have one like it themselves, everyone knows that the vast majority of people are not gonna be spinning up a VPS to run and maintain a proxy relay.

I think needing to even subscribe and pay for a proxy that someone else runs is going to be too big an adoption hurdle for nostr to get beyond fringe usage in the age of downloading an app to your phone that "just works" in about 15 seconds. I hope I'm wrong but that's how it seems to me.

For me, the problem with even "50 or 100" big relays that everyone uses is that each and every one of those relays becomes a target for government's that think their job is to keep people from saying things they don't want them to say. If there is such a target set, no matter the intentions of the people operating those relays, the whole thing is too vulnerable.

I think the only way it's not vulnerable is if relays are tiny, cheap, stupid and ubiquitous so that it's effectively impossible to police them by sheer numbers. I recognize that world has all the performance and scaling issues we are talking about and it also may not work in the sense of getting past fringe adoption. But again, I'm here for the free speech absolutism, not for the stickers, badges, likes, follower counts, etc.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

pjv 2y ago

I don't know why the post I'm replying to has a content warning. My old man fingers and eyes don't know how to use this little phone client very well.