Thanks nostr:npub1dergggklka99wwrs92yz8wdjs952h2ux2ha2ed598ngwu9w7a6fsh9xzpc, that gave more hope.
But, Does that scale though?
Say now we have 10K daily users. And suddenly it's 1 million
Does each old users (assuming all have sats and can zap) need to support zap 100 users so that everyone can join paid relay?
my experience with social media is not all user want to post to the world, not all users want the most functionalities, some want to just connect with 10 ppl they know, some just want to consume content without creating/posting any, etc. on a smaller platform you have more users that want it all, but the larger it grows the more people there is that are not looking for that level of use.
Yea. The pure consumer of content should be fine. As consuming content from paid relay is actually free. The payment is only to post to the relay AFAIK. Except for filtered relay like 🍷.
Unfortunately it doesn't scale in the most desirable ways. Lightning requires a Bitcoin native transaction, and there isn't enough chain space for the whole world to even open a single channel, plus they need liquidity.
So even large numbers of people opening a channel and providing liquidity is a lot of friction. Nostr is a good start, but it will need more if we don't want to see relays centralize in similar ways that Web2 centralizes.
As others have conceded below - it is still useful for tight-knit communities who can run private relays for trusted members, but trust percolates all the way up.
The massive relays will eventually need payment or identify you as valuable (or both) to serve you, which leads to familiar methods of monetization. Of course you can take your key elsewhere, but you can on traditional web as well (just include a signed message in your profile).
And once these massive relays get their network effect and economies of scale, the accountability for global communication then again rests on the hands of a select few - but at least "bUiLd YoUr OwN TwItTeR" becomes much, much easier and doesn't require people to migrate clients or authentication - but it always tends towards economies of scale and relays generally centralizing and monetizing.
I don't bring this up because I am a doomer on freedom tech, but because I enthusiastically believe the problems are solvable and that valuable work is left to be done.
