Oddbean

Gotcha! But the reality is a bit more nuanced. Nostr was blocked in china quite quickly. Bluesky is 100x the size of nostr. I think now it's 200x the size, growing 100x more in the last month. It's blocked because it's big. If nostr was that big, it would be blocked too. Nostr relays are just web servers at the end of the day. You can make the argument that its easier to run a relay than a web server, but that probably is not true. Nostr has a bit of resilience which is a good thing, and better than the status quo. But it can easily be blocked, its just too small to block right now.

Yo 🤙 I appreciate the explanation! I’d imagine that nostr relays offer the “whack a mole” redundancy that would make it easier to circumvent attempted censorship, or is it that the entire network can be “blocked” in a higher level way? I knew that Damus was kicked out of China and that nostr was added to the naughty list there, but didn’t realize there was a way to actually suppress the content across the board (vs bluesky which I’d imagine is easier because it’s centralized) There’s sort of a question in there but I haven’t had enough coffee to articulate it fully

Nostr kind of centralized around a handful of key relays. If those ‘moles’ get whacked, the system might not fully recover, especially since most of the smaller, long-tail relays have moved on. If the long-tail had been supported, it would be a different story. So yeah, taking out a few big relays would actually be quite effective right now. That said, moles only get whacked when they grow large enough or start causing problems. At the moment, Nostr is still relatively small and not really causing major headaches, though I’m sure it’s on the radar of various deep states. The big advantage Nostr offers is that if one admin cancels you, you’re not starting over from scratch. It’s more like a shadow ban than a full ban. Your identity and content persist—it’s just about finding another relay. That said, Nostr is a solid system with a lot of potential. There’s a bit of a catch-22, though: right now, it’s heavily subsidized and not sustainable. For it to become sustainable, it would need significant growth, but growth would make it a bigger target. So for now, it’s more of an R&D niche, not really threatening anyone.

Thanks Melvin, this is a very thorough explanation. I guess it’s safe to say that while we’re still small, there’s time for multiple smaller relays to develop and grow, and create additional redundancies for censorship resistance. It’s early and very exciting to be a part of this 🔥