Nostr Web Client

Beginner Questions: How do Relais work?

If I am connected to only one relay, do I only get a glimpse of the nostrverse? Like looking through one window of a house?

Or is it all about trust, meaning I’m getting all my info through one contact and so I should connect to several Relais or maybe even run my own?

Can Relais be compared to bitcoin full nodes?

nostr:npub1kuy0wwf0tzzqvgfv8zpw0vaupkds3430jhapwrgfjyn7ecnhpe0qj9kdj8

David King 2y ago

The architecture of Nostr is designed so that you as a publisher/consumer don’t have to rely on any given relay to carry your messages. Each relay is something of a “window” into part of what’s happening on Nostr. The architecture is resistant to censorship by any given relay. So if you publish to a handful of relays they can all “compete” to serve your messages to people who are interested in reading them.

Relays serve a very different function to bitcoin full nodes. I wouldn’t compare them too closely. Though you may choose to run your own relay and can ensure that your relay always carries your messages.

I’m configured to connect to 15 relays at the moment. You can experiment, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it when you’re first getting started.

I’m happy to try to help if you have any more questions!

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Discussion

813r 2y ago

Thanks for explaining! So…let’s say I want to check if my friend “Dave” is on nostr. On other platforms he goes by some handle “@CoolDave”. I go ahead and type variations of his name/handle into the search field but get no results that appear to be him.

Is it still possible that he is active with his name/handle, but I can’t find him in “my” part of nostr?

How closely would our relays have to be located (direct connection, 1 hop, several hops) for him to appear in my search results?

If he sends me his public key via text, will I find him no matter how “far” we are apart?

David King 2y ago

If he sends you his public key (npub) you can pretty reliably find him. Depending on your client it might automatically check for relays where he is already publishing and add it to your list of relays on Nostr.

For search/namespace stuff I usually use https://nostr.band. There are various services that try to aggregate all the people/notes they can find across all the relays they know about.

813r 2y ago

Cool, thank you!

Question concerning storage space in the network: I understand the pure text communication is very efficient and relays can provide this with use of very little resources. But since there are no centralized servers, all data has to be provided by the relays.

What about pictures and videos? If I start spamming loads of data, will relays start banning me at some point?

Does anyone who runs a relay need to set and adapt the rules that his or her relay follows?

Thank you for your time 🙃