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Nuh 🔻 | 18 days ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 This a common question: if you need to use a bridge between browsers and Mainline DHT then how is this better than Nostr relays?

1. Native apps obviously are a thing, and arguably they are giving the web a run for it's money, so why dismiss that?

2. relays/resolvers for Pkarr are not only useful for browsers, they also add some reliability and reduce the load on Mainline which then becomes like the DNS root servers

3. Finally to your point, the upside is that you as an app developer can use your own relay to support your browser customers, and I can use my own relay to support my users, and both our relays are going to magically connect, not by gossiping with untrusted strangers, and not by forming private swarms, but by simply using Mainline as the backbone.
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Nuh 🔻 | 18 days ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 I am struggling a bit to explain this, but I will keep trying until I find the best words:

DHTs needing a bridge to browsers doesn't equate them to Nostr relays, anymore than Bitcoin needing an Electrum server makes it equivalent to a bank.

Anyone can build a bridge, and they still work with each other without knowing (or trusting) each other, that is the definition of social scalability, right?

nostr:note17fgpyt2we2wy5yfrwfzkqmmmg7w7nz69lpa4mgedwq9svy074kvqcf5e45
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melvincarvalho | 18 days ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 92% use apps on mobile
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brugeman | 18 days ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Thanks for the input. Native apps don't really have to rely on dns like web apps and are already much less restricted and harder to censor at transport level. Those are much better censored at app store level and hence my focus on the web apps. Pkarr being cache seems like a bug, not a feature - if resolving HAS to use cache middleware to be reliable then it's less decentralised, and 10m nodes turn to 1. It looks like unless this becomes a web standard browsers won't benefit fundamentally. I thought about this much less than you did so this isn't a criticism, just thinking out loud.
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Nuh 🔻 | 17 days ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +2 
 you focusing on browser apps is fine, but you are wrong that native apps don't benefit from censorship resistant DNS, that is like saying Mastodon is fine on Native. No we still need users to be able to migrate from one cloud provider to another without breaking all their URLs.

As for cache, everything needs to be cached on every possible layer, there is no scalability otherwise, DNS only works thanks to TTL.

Focus, your criticism is about bridges being necessary between the web and the DHT.

Pkarr clients can use multiple relays in parallel, and if you think will so can Nostr, I remind you of the most important point:

at scale there will be so many nostr relays, it will be impossible to find peoples data unless you both share some of the relays (centralisation pressure) or if Nostr relays are gossiping with each other (basically like Bitcoin nodes).

I am submitting to you, that 1000s of Pkarr relays (one by every app developer and then some that users can add) are better than Nostr relays, because they don't have the same centralisation pressure (any relay is equivalent to any other), and Mainline is at the extreme edge of quality of overlay network, and any gossiping between Nostr relays will be guaranteed to be inferior, because gossiping is inferior to DHTs in this usecase, and if they form a DHT, it will be so small that it is much more vulnerable to Sybil attacks, and if they grew to millions of nodes, then we are back at Pkarr so what the hell? 😀

Think about it a bit and try to draw the line to the extreme of scalability. 

In general, in **pemessionless** overlay networks, scale really really matters because otherwise you have no defense against Sybil.

So without millions of nodes, you are going yo be vulnerable to Sybil attacks, forcing Nostr relays to whitelist relays they want to gossip with, and now we are back at not all relays are equal, and your relay your run on your umbrel or vps is worthless because no one wants to gossip with you.

all of that assuming that Nostr relays are going to evolve into an overlay network in the first place, which would be ironic because Nostr clearly started judgmental of p2p and wanting to keep relays only serving clients.

So please tell me, ignoring Native apps mobile and desktop, how is Pkarr relays not better than Nostr relays then?

Also, their API is literally 2 endpoints GET and PUT, and their CPU cost is almost nothing, they are so dump :)