How to run a big relay profitably and solve spam at the same time. Charge 1 sat per note.

Optional free tier requiring a proof of work challenge. It works like this: the relay creates a unique challenge, a random number, and sends it to the client for a response. Client response takes the form of a nonce, another random number. To verify the proof of work, concatenate the challenge and response and hash them. If the hash does not start with enough zero bits, drop it on the ground and close connection. That's a spammer.

If you think about it, bitcoin is just banked proof of work. So by paying a nominal fee in sats you are providing a time-delayed proof of work. It all comes down to proof of work at the end of the day. Spammers can't do it at scale. Users can.

"But vnprc I am a penniless pauper, don't I deserve social media too?" Honestly, no. But you can buy a bitaxe and earn some spending sats that way. Better yet: get an old S9 and heat your home with it. Now you have shitposting money and you are decentralizing hashrate. Congratulations, Harry. You're a bitcoiner.
nostr:nevent1qqsy2zhzn3t9e3sp9ryyne9lace7d2v73w9y9455aegrmjuctryxxuqpqqpzp5c99j3784frk8kgqec7kxa6q5t69afzux2h0rwg8hgr4rvy59cwqvzqqqqqqydxa2g4 

 People pay to send spam 1 sat TX to every node on the lightning network regularly, that's 17k or so per message. Often enough that there are services to help you do it.

Will the effort put into spam go up, yeah. Don't think a sat per note will make it go away. 

 Charge 2 sats. Charge 10 sats. Charge 0.1 sats. Once you have built the solution you can do price discovery. 

 Maybe not, but it could at least help fund relays that may otherwise go offline due to the extra cost of spam. There's a similar advantage to all the one sat spam transactions I get on Lightning. Sure, it sucks, but at least fees are being paid and even I'm getting wealthier by some micro amount. That's certainly better than getting absolutely nothing from spam like now. It would also be cool if users could set a fee for interacting on their notes. I doubt anyone who can't afford a few sats are or whatever the amount is are going to say anything I really care about anyway. It's probably just going to distract me and add no value. 

 Pay me to comment on my note could be interesting. It changes how people interact with the network though. For some it would be a wash, put 100 sats in a pass them around forever. Big accounts get paid. Small accounts have to pay to be here or get bumped down to lurkers. 

 This goes beyond just spam though. I'm almost definitely not going to get any value from someone who can't or won't spend whatever small sat amount is required to interact with me. I don't even necessarily need to get the sats if there's some technical way to give it to my relays instead. I'd prefer to make it optional though if possible. I just don't really need to see shit from low value npubs. And if I do see them there should at least be a cost for it if they're being sinister like spammers. The free for all model clearly isn't cutting it regardless. 

 Obviously, you could just have a client hide notifications or whatever from people you don't follow, but that doesn't help with the cost of the spam and low value responses. 

 "But vnprc, I pay more than that in lightning transaction fees." Yes you do. This is why we ecash.

on-chain is for large transactions
lightning is for medium transactions
ecash is for microtransactions

You're already running a relay. Build in a cashu mint and amortize those lightning transaction fees away.