Oddbean new post about login | logout i’m intrigued by the pay as you go model instead of subscriptions to monetize relays. have you done more writing about this idea? seems generally applicable throughout the ecosystem. i think of it like a zap for the relay? should reach relay get a bit of ecash? how might stamp pricing work or form a market across relays? how long would storage commitments be?
The reason we dislike the subscription model is that it requires a fixed public key. A fixed public key can compromise the privacy of metadata in encrypted messages. Stamp pricing would be generated through competition among relays. Different prices could correspond to different storage durations.
We believe that small, anonymous pay-per-use payments are preferable to subscriptions. Implementing small pay-per-use payments on the internet used to be difficult, until the advent of Bitcoin ecash.
oh yeah, i’m not advocating going toward subscriptions. just wanted to hear more your thoughts on how the pay as you go might work in practice. it seems like a good/underexplored idea. iirc the keychat website showed something that looked like messaging channels instead of a feed. are you mostly designing toward private messaging? if public do you think a given publisher should be paying all/multiple relays? do you run a relay that accepts this kind of message+ecash? do you imagine the relay operator is usually also a mint or do you imagine those as typically very different functions?
Got it. Now Keychat focus on private note, aka chat app. I think public note can also use bitcoin ecash stamp. It is also possible his fans pay ecash to get his latest post. Keychat relay only add collecting bitcoin ecash function. If the relay operator provides free service, current relays e.g., Damus relay can be used as Keychat relay. Nostr relay operators can also be one cashu mint. Keycaht now using the third party cashu mints.