Oddbean

It seems like different public relays are being attacked at varying times. For example, there was a heavy attack on Damus, then it stopped for a while, only to return later. The same thing happened with oxtr, "wiz.biz", and a few other relays. What I’ve been doing is disabling and then re-enabling downloads from the public relays under attack (while still writing to them so that people can read my messages). It’s a bit chaotic. And IMO, most of the proposed solutions have had worse consequences than the spam itself. For instance, since some folks are "protecting themselves" (i.e., hiding) exclusively behind WoT relays which I don’t have access to, I'm never sure if they’re even receiving my messages. Similarly, preventing folks without NIP-05 addresses from writing to a relay is even more damaging to new users than the WoT issue. Finally, it seems like the attackers are already PoW-capable, which means the PoW relays are just adding complexity for legitimate users. As a user, what I’d like is a quick way to toggle between only viewing posts and replies from "connections of connections" to viewing posts from everyone on Nostr. Apparently, Damus offers this feature. Do you know of any Android or web (but mobile-friendly) clients doing something similar?

Hey Utxo, here's the issue. It's hard for me to know which WoT I can or can't write to. I've encountered a few "blocked: you are not in the WoT" errors, as well as frequent "rate limiting" messages, even though I haven’t sent many messages. I’m not sure which of these errors are legitimate and which ones are due to misconfiguration or glitches. I also tried adding a few WoT relays on a secondary client but couldn’t find my own post right after submitting it. I'll be writing a few notes exclusively to WoT relays for testing. Since you likely have access to every WoT in existence, I’d appreciate it if you could give a thumbs up to the notes you can see.

Those errors are actually normal and you are probably only getting them once in a while. The wot relays, while refreshing the network, temporarily don't allow posting while it rebuilds the wot. Even I get those errors on my own relay. Since I follow you, fairly certain you have access to every single one...

Thanks for the clarification, utxo. Now that you’re following me, it may boost my reach. After three hours, I still haven’t received answers on two out of three relays, although I did get replies from yours. I just offered to zap the first person who replies to my other two posts. Let’s see if I find any takers.

Thanks for replying Derek. For reference I haven't received a single reply or reaction on wss://nostrelites.org/ for almost 3 hours. And I have even bumped it by self-replying to my post: nostr:nevent1qqsxmglrv3e8adtrh6uzd9q98fr76akmjlxy65up76z2d87wmy99mqcpxdmhxw309adnycfsxyargc3sxqaxzepsxsarxc3sxqaxzvp5xqaxvenx8fnx2wpk8gmnzdmxt5argwpk8yhsyg8wnkteuls5rz5lw3et47pde9sg9gx5y5dh0093wznwemynlt0lvspsgqqqqqqsl6mudd I'm now offering sats publicly and there's still one relay where folks haven't found my post (it has been 3 hours and counting).

Lol, you were faster than me and already replied to the other 2 :). So this means that my posts are readable, WoT relays are just quiet. Thanks nostr:nprofile1qqsw9n8heusyq0el9f99tveg7r0rhcu9tznatuekxt764m78ymqu36cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuat50phjummwv5hsz9thwden5te0veex2mnn9e6hg7r09ehkuef0qyfhwumn8ghj7am0wsh82arcduhx7mn99ue0hx63, I'm sending a few zapz your way.