This is terrible logic. Any crappy project can use this logic to just suck people dry for years on end. It doesn't mean Nostr can't improve, but the fact that some projects take time should not all convince anyone that something moving slowly can actually get into orbit just because a rocket starts also moves slowly at one point in the launch.

Web of Trust is old. Nothing about Nostr indicates Web of Trust will work today if it didn't work before - and by work, I mean scale to meaningful adoption. There are both UX and incentive problems, and both lead to a Web of Trust naturally deteriorating into a centralized model where users trust few monolithic authorities.

Which is exactly what we already have. It's exactly what YOU USED to log onto Nostr, nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a, you relied on that certificate, which is completely centralized in its distribution and authentication, to get onto Nostr.

I'm happy you are pushing decentralized tech, and that you haven't been led astray by 'shitcoinery,' but people running Bitcoin and Nostr nodes as a hobby is not going to get us far past this.

Bitcoin existing makes PoW as an arbitrary anti-spam measure (like for emails) completely defunct. You could pay a miner $100 to make enough work to send 10,000 spam emails - and that's being generous, it'd probably be far more affordable.

Is anyone interested in consensus design around here?

oh shoot I guess me being here is redundant then! see ya later!

I guess I can see why they don't like 'proof of sats.'

For one it exposes the privilege of the non-poors, but more importantly it reveals an alternative approach which wouldn't pay relays (which doesn't help scale): that approach being to just check a users balance for a threshold of sats and ignore any below it - this effectively multiplies the cost of Sybilling accounts by threshold amount.

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.

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.

So why doesn't everyone just use free relays?

whomst've