Oddbean new post about login | logout "Should every nostrich run a relay?" is a very different question from "should every Bitcoiner run a Bitcoin/lightning node?" due to the differences in guarantees. I think every nostrich should run a relay IF THEY REQUIRE PERMANENCE for their historical notes. What do I mean by this? Relays should be considered ephemeral. They are under no obligation to store your data indefinitely unless you enter into an agreement for that (paid relays.) Relays can go offline at any time and take your notes with them. This is why clients connect to many relays by default, for redundancy. I run a relay for myself that only accepts notes from my pubkey. If my third party relays change, I'll just push my old notes from my personal relay to new relays for them to be indexed. Nostr can't scale from the perspective of expecting every nostr client to connect to thousands or millions of personal relays simultaneously.
In many respects, it's similar to a self-hosted blog. If you don't have your own relay, you still are a digital sharecropper, farming on borrowed land.
And even paid relays can go offline, just like centralized services can. So, as you mention, if someone requires permanence for their notes, it always falls back on them to set that up, whether by running a nostr relay or by backing up their stuff that’s hosted on any centralized platform (assuming there’s an option to do so).
There seems to be two issues: 1) Does the architecture cause it to centralize over time by creating an incentive to connect to the largest relays? 2) Who will run these larger relays? Will they continue to be subsidized by wealthy bitcoiners?
Oh, one more 3) isn’t it dangerous for free speech to force all the content through just a few relays?
These are similar questions as lightning centralization issues due to how liquidity works. It's a trade-off between how many relays to which a client should reasonably connect vs what level of relay distribution is sufficient for censorship resistance.
But what’s your opinion on it? It seems users will always choose the largest relays because they want reach and content. Nostr appears to be centralizing because the incentives are pushing it there. Am i missing something that will push it to decentralize?
free stuff is bait for stupid people explain the revenue model that doesn't involve being paid by goverment intelligence agencies that doesn't more or less eradicate every aspect of the protocol from its actual deployment pls in 5 years time free relays are all going to be pure honeypots
The best relays with infinite storage and 0 fees will be run by the NSA
In my opinion, not having a relay means that a person can't prove that they said or didn't say something.
Are notes timestamped in a verifiable way? Or can I create a fake "history" of "things i said" ?
Example of how events are saved:
{
"id": "",
"pubkey": "",
"created_at": ,
"kind": ,
"tags": [],
"content": "",
"sig": ""
}
The id field tells us the ID of the event.
The pubkey field tells us the public key of the user who sent the event.
The created_at field tells us when the event was published.
The kind field tells us what sort of event it is.
The tags field tells us about tags on the event. These are used for creating links, adding media, and mentioning other users or events.
The content field gives us the content of the event. In this case, the short text post.
The sig field is the signature that clients use to verify that the user with this pubkey did in fact send this event on the date specified. Ok. So by running a node you cant prove that you said something as i understand it? You can create a post with a backdated timestamp.
It is not possible to change the timestamp due to the last field of the event. "The sig field is the signature that clients use to verify that the user with this pubkey did in fact send this event on the date specified."
this is the way. run a relay if you care about your content or care about others accessing your content.
Sadly the people who need to see this are the larps on Bitcoin Twitter Spaces FUDing tf out of NOSTR Time will heal them
I might do it just because I like building computers and projects. I'm just wondering if I should start small (Raspberry Pi or VM) and learn or just start planning a proper server build 🤔? I'm not sure I know enough about relays to start planning this yet, but I'm interested in trying it.