Re-occurring problem I tend to see here is communication threads being just partially displayed (or quotes referring to stuff I can't see) because messages are sent through different relays. That's the most "visible" aspect. If it works this way, I'd have to be sure to have at least one relay in common with each contact I'm communicating with all the time _and_ this particular relay needs to be available to work well. Generally, accounts being closely tied to servers seems to me one of the major drawbacks in protocols like ActivityPub or Diaspora, but the opposite probably should be much more akin to TCP in general: There's a myriad of unnamed nodes, the protocol makes sure "information" is sent from sender to recipient _under all circumstances_ and will try to choose hops / relays at hand for that to work. The very moment relays become more prominent (like, "choose yours" vs "you're blocked on this one" vs "this one's a paid service", this whole concept seems to give again too much power to individual relays that just shouldn't probably be there).