Oddbean

I heard that there is an ongoing movement now for people that truly care about decentralization and censorship-resistance to only publish to small relays. I believe nostr:nprofile1qyfhwumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetsv9njuetn9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwpexjmtpdshxuet59uq3zamnwvaz7te3xsczue3h0ghxjme0qqsgydql3q4ka27d9wnlrmus4tvkrnc8ftc4h8h5fgyln54gl0a7dgsc2k8v3 and nostr:nprofile1qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qgewaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8xmn0wf6zuum0vd5kzmp0qythwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnswf5k6ctv9ehx2ap0qqsqfjg4mth7uwp307nng3z2em3ep2pxnljczzezg8j7dhf58ha7ejgz0easp will adhere, but while they don't at least nostr:nprofile1qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qgewaehxw309a5x7ervvfhkgtnwdaehgu339e3k7mf0qyfhwumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetsv9njuetn9uq3qamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd4hk6tcqyztuwzjyxe4x2dwpgken87tna2rdlhpd02va5cvvgrrywpddnr3jy5uqf05 , nostr:nprofile1qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qgnwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxtcpz9mhxue69uhnzdps9enrw73wd9hj7qpql2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqgh57r7 , nostr:nprofile1qyfhwumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetsv9njuetn9uq3kamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwdehhxarjd93ksetn9ehhyee0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qpqutx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s820ky4 and nostr:nprofile1qyf8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68yv339e3k7mf0qyw8wumn8ghj7cmgwf5hxarsd9kxctnwdaehgu339e3k7mf0qywhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytndw46xjmnewaskcmr9wshxxmmd9uqzphtxf40yq9jr82xdd8cqtts5szqyx5tcndvaukhsvfmduetr85ce2wlgd0 have already started.

It's true, but also in nostr your reach is unavoidable. Clients will faithfully propagate the notez 🎵🎶 and somehow nostr.band uses telepathy to find some relay it never should have had a reason to see 😂

Anyone I follow can add theforest.nostr1.com as a relay. Best relay content. Hosted by nostr:nprofile1qyd8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytn5dpjhxctdv43kzapwd9hj7qgmwaehxw309a6xsetxdaex2um59ehx7um5wgcjucm0d5hsz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjme0qqs8eseg5zxak2hal8umuaa7laxgxjyll9uhyxp86c522shn9gj8crsx9cel5 .

Has anyone seen a list of up-and-coming relays that we could start publishing to? I'm happy to add a few on! #asknostr #nostr nostr:note1dc2drrmdmlkcyna5kkcv8yls4f8zaj82jjl00xrh2tmmhw3ejsmscu6nft

No, very few people should be running relays. We have probably 10x more relays than we need right now. The point is that if one relay goes down or bans you, you have at least one other relay that can continue to serve all your stuff. This doesn't require self-hosting.

That's a great question, I don't know. Maybe it can't be answered, because it's dependent on a whole bunch of social factors, like how likely relay runners are to censor users, or what a given user's risk profile for censorship looks like. In theory, 2 relays for the entire network is enough. But that introduces scaling issues and the possibility for them to cooperate in banning someone. My best guess is that at the network's current size, 5-10 hubs is probably enough, plus relays that support special use cases, like authenticated communities and archival relays. Nerds will run their own relays, which is fine, but it doesn't really benefit anyone as long as censorship or relay failure is only occasional. I guess what's most important is that 1. there are backups of important data, and 2. it's easy to create a new relay when one is needed.

I think a big part of the problem is that tech giants centralised TCP/IP to a point that big hosting companies can easily take part in censorship under the guise of regulatory pressure. Self-hosted relays that are open are what we need - Better yet, nostr-client-intergrated-relays with meek or something of the like. No point in having multiple relays hosted by a singe company - That's still a high degree of centralisation, even if spread around the globe. Can't remember which one it was, but I recall a desktop Nostr app with a built-in relay service, going over a tor tunnel. I have a feeling that's where Lume announced it was headed in the future - And I think that's the right step to go. Nostr on websites is great from an accessibility perspective (hail PWAs I guess), but accessibility and censorship-resistance are not the same thing. I'd say anyone using nostr solely via websites is setting themselves up for trouble, at some point, somewhere, for some reason.

I think you're right that DNS, TLS certificates, and ISPs are all chokepoints. Maybe something like i2p bridges or something could overcome that. But that's not specific to nostr, so we have the help of the broader freedom tech community available to us.

Those will just become the new “big relays” soon then… just moves the goalposts. It doesn’t solve the problem. I think the current model mixed with clients as relays & outbox model as the fallback for finding the relays you need to sync with is key. 🔑 nostr:note14qapnc4hk6hwpwf9f6f2ja33d55rqn0nd8jshnx55d4yz5l0nucs3nlrf3

I’m just gonna try to build it. No use in petitioning everyone, just like with GitNestr. One thing at a time though… If it works well people can copy it to their clients. I’m sure we’ll run into hiccups along the way. Only way to find out is by coding it & experimenting first-hand.

Current #nostr controversy. Which side will you choose. Decentralize and continue to fight censorship or going back to the same data hoarding digital giants we were running from. #relaysize #gossip nostr:nevent1qqsxu9x33akalmvzf76ttvxrj0c25n3wer4ff0hhnpm49aamhguegdcpz4mhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2un9d3shjtnrdaksygpm7rrrljungc6q0tuh5hj7ue863q73qlheu4vywtzwhx42a7j9n5psgqqqqqqsjujeqd

Server operators should decisively decide what they will store, and what they will actually relay to other servers. One way to reduce server operating costs is to reduce the excessive amounts of network bandwidth consumed on retrieving duplicate notes across multiple servers. This is going to break down if users have to alacarte subscribe to multiple relays just to see the posts in their connection circles

We need broad adoption of strfry negentropy inter-relay note rectification protocol for this to work. We need mid and small relays. Smalls talk to a few mids to limit data and rectify a smaller set of notes follows/followers of follows/followers and maybe some subscribed hash tags. Mids talk mainly to other mids and a unique groups of smalls and rectify a larger set of the follows/followers of follows/followers and hash tags of connected small relays. I think a system with built in economics will create an incentivized, sustainable, durable, and decentralized network. Ecash attached to notes signed to relay keys is a possible economic model. Smalls collect ecash from users and pay to mids for updates. Network congestion could lead to these fees becoming dynamic. The alpha in the fees becomes the operational budget of small and mid relays. Federations of mids could group into fedimints or run their own cashu mints for settling balances and allowing lightning withdrawals.

It depends on what you mean by "size". There's WoT size, which is where more people you follow post to a given relay: https://i.nostr.build/Q778K.png There are also relay monitoring systems like nostr.watch that are working on a system for reporting how many active users are on a relay, along with other metrics.

Is there a relay that's also a relay proxy? Like, I throw the relay some sats and it opens those 100 websockets with appropriate filters. Maybe also a blastr? fan in: left hand. fan out: right hand. Fan in... fan out... fan in...