The main reason for a specialized relay is that the files that store influence scores may end up being pretty big, maybe big enough that most relays will reject them. Perhaps there would be ways to keep the files smaller but I’d rather have the option of larger files without worrying that I’m going to end up pissing off relay operators everywhere. Right now at brainstorm.ninja, I have about 20,000 npubs with nonzero influence scores. That number will grow as the number of nostr users increases. My plan right now is to store them as an event, maybe a modified NIP-51, which is accessed by clients. An API would be another option in case the file size were to get too unwieldy.

So I’m not sure yet whether it would make more sense for the calculation of the influence scores to be kept separate from the relay or to merge them. I’m leaning towards keeping them separate, if it’s going to be a relay managed by an enterprise service that charges a fee. But if it’s going to be a personal relay, and the scores will help the relay know which content is worth keeping and which content should be tossed out, perhaps it would make sense for score calculation and the relay to be merged together — not sure yet if that makes sense or not.