Something like that makes sense to me. Nostr needs some form of monetization but I don't know how you make it work. 

I could see people having a bunch of free relays and then maybe one or two paids, but over time I would think we would all centralize around the biggest one or two paid relays just to be seen. If I'm going to be paying the equivalent of $6 USD a month, I'm going to pick the fastest horse sort of deal. 

I don't know how you fix that.