I'm not 100% convinced of the model, but I'm pretty sure old model doesn't really 'work' either

A relay should be run for the love, like running a game or ftp server.

Furthermore it's good that it's here for when the necessity arrises.

Fiatjaf should put his focus on that instead of bitcoin, as bitcoin doesn't seem to understand. 🤷‍♂️

This is a much bigger topic and challenge for Nostr no one wants to address other than Sloganeering with emotions. A day will come when running a node is not going to be financially viable and overlords will come to control the network.

People don't have to pay to post, but they should pay to support costs and labor. Instead of suggesting ads, which many do not like, or direct support, which I suggested and many use today, can you think of otherwayss?

I think an ad model could work if users are segmented based on their interests. What you say on #nostr can tell a lot to advertisers (although it would be for niche advertisers to start) and it wouldn’t require to gather more info than the info already publicly available.

Many folks here are not going to like the idea but I also think that a #crypto on Nostr that would be distributed to #relay owners and would be bought and burnt by advertisers to run ads could be a sound crypto-economic model for Nostr.

Maybe it could be built on a #drivechain?

Specialized relays will be paid and profitable, relays that allow larger payloads, relays that ensure your data will be kept for years etc. Normal relays will mostly be free I think.

I think long term scaling will be fine, we can have listings for products and services, each relay has its own board, the cost to have your item listed can subsidize the social aspect of the protocol, like businesses at a mall paying for their space and letting customers in for free. Access to DVMs and DLCs that let you create a MySpace esq profile page will also help. Mid term scaling seems like the tricky part, advertising from a company may require kyc, then relays won't be able to accept money from users.

Afaik relays already have an option to include ads. Clients however are not required to display them.

The only way a forced ad model works on Nostr is if you control both the client and the relay.

Paying for content and publishing however is slowly becoming more and more normal. Think Twitter Blue (or whatever it is now), Youtube Premium, Patreon and similar services, and even paywall newspapers like New York Post and so on.

The crucial question is whether we can provide a better service for a given price than competition.

That's a feature, not a bug.

Paying for a niche product is called a market.

Offering a service (spam filtering ) is a business.

Paying for things through ads is what gave us modern privacy violations.

If we had just payed for email (each email sent, like regular mail) in the beginning it would have been different.

Well said, the niche demographic is probably gonna be relay runners themselves.

I believe in lowering costs rather than seeking profits.