Maybe either from the relay or client end we could cache the follower count. I am not sure follow counts need to be updated in real time. It could be stored client side so that it doesn’t need to do a complete follower query. I’m also sure a relay could be modified to cache the query on followers so it just returns the cached data instead of having to do a database search each and every time.
Discussion
Each relay stores only a small subset of followers, so the follower count cache on the relay is useless. The client needs each follower list to calculate the total, and when you click the ? to load followers from the relay and calculate it, it can be cached. Maybe you need to add a refresh button to click it when you need to get the latest count. This is maybe a terrible approach, but it will help
I see what you’re saying on the relays. I do still think that caching on the relay may help for certain queries even if the client is pulling from multiple sources. Repeat queries tax relays.