Oddbean

Majority of websites are garbage that doesn't need to be a website. Prior to nostr, it was necessary to "own your audience" by directing them to your owned channels (website, mailing list). You couldn't rely on one centralized account because of the deplatforming risk. But now that we have nostr, and you have little to no deplatforming risk, there is no need to have a website for your content. Articles are simply long form content and comments can all be nostr-based. The only missing piece is being able to reach everyone at a 30%+ rate (normal email open rates). But other than this the new web needs far fewer abusive, privacy invasive, data stealing websites to exist. Eventually we will have clients that focus exclusively on publishers by making the best possible publishing AND long form consumption experience. I can't wait for that day.

Relays have no obligation to store long form content. It's likely that much of it will get nuked. Relay's are designed to send notes from one user to another *in realtime*. So freshness counts. The chance of deplatforming may be lower, but the chance of losing older content is higher.

They have no contractual obligation to store it for the long-term. Wheras websites do generally have a contract to store data for the long term. So while delplatorming is lower, freshness is higher, chance of losing content increases. Relays also tend not to stick around alot. I've been rugged by paid relays run by anonymous devs. Each storage mechanism involves trade-offs, one does not replace another.

A server is just a service no different from a professionally managed relay. Just because there hasn’t been a highly reliable paid relay doesn’t mean there can’t be. There will be if nostr scales.

Nostr doesnt scale though in its current form. Its a decent unfunded hobby netowrk, but at 10k daily users, there will not be enough revenue to keep the lights on. Relays are turning off on a daily basis, and you also lose a talented developer too.

Its not defeatist, it's acknowledging the reality of technical trade-offs. Scaling requires work, not wishful thinking. In the 4th year of the web they dropped everything to prioritize a scalaing architecture. It worked. Nostr is in year 4 and has no equivalent scaling architeccture. Relays are not designed as long-term storage, they are designed to relay notes from one user to another. In that regard, it works well. Use the right tool for the right job. Acknlowedge that there are technical trade-offs.

“Relays are not designed…” There’s no reason you couldn’t specialized in storing data for the long haul. If there is demand, services will spring up. We don’t have an architecture scaling problem at the moment, we have demand problem but its not a nostr issue rather than a unique experience issue which can and will be resolved. There’s a lot of value in what nostr provides from censorship perspective, walled garden breakdown and not needing to be responsible for takedowns. I’d say everything is looking up given the “hobbyist” nature of this protocol. If scaling becomes an issue; the market will solve it. I can’t agree with much of anything you’ve said.

Please dont put words in my mouth. I've been around nostr far longer than you and helped put together some of what you see today behind the scenes. It's highly likely that you would not posting here today if it wasnt for unpaid the work I did, and others like me, did. Scaling nostr requires a huge amount of work, and is far from inevitable. Relays are not designed to be storage systems, they are designed to relay notes from one user to another. The clue is in the name.

It really is a paradigm shift. For all the blog websites out there to be replaced you only need relays serving long form posts and clients focused on displaying posts. And in the absolute worst case when you have a large library of your articles with services like that and they all stop existing or decide to not work with you anymore, you can still run both yourself and recover the whole history including comments, hosted on your own website. Worst case, todays status quo