Good post. 🙏

Your analysis though is missing a dive into the centralization gravity of the tech architecture itself. 

I understand your point that there will always be a psychopath willing to subsidize freedom. Maybe that’s true and continues. It’s been true so far.

But psychopaths are not enough to keep nostr decentralized. 

Relays are NOT equivalent. A relay with 100k users is not the same as a relay with two users. 

Relays equal reach. Everyone wants the greatest audience for their posts and to never miss a post from someone they follow. This creates a natural incentive to connect to the largest relays.

The problem with the architecture is that nostr clients limit the number of relays you can have. For example, nostr:npub18m76awca3y37hkvuneavuw6pjj4525fw90necxmadrvjg0sdy6qsngq955 recommends ten or less. 

This means that when you’re limited to the number of relays, you want to connect to the largest (greatest cache of content and most connected users). Nobody wants to connect to the smallest. 

This creates a centralizing gravity where relays get larger and more concentrated. Eventually we could end up with 10 massive relays. There would be no need for the 11th so few people would connect to it.

As you know from your analysis on shitcoin blockchains, they have a natural centralizing gravity. They need to be faster and cheaper than their competitors. This forces them to go POS and run fewer, larger nodes to increase throughput. 

Nostr’s architecture has this same centralizing gravity. 

This needs to be discussed, verified, and if confirmed… then fixed. 

Ultimately, we’re not on team nostr v1. We’re all on team freedom and privacy. 

nostr:npub1excellx58e497gan6fcsdnseujkjm7ym5yp3m4rp0ud4j8ss39js2pn72a nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx 

nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z