Oddbean new post about login | logout Hey everyone. I’m new here and just learning about Nostr so thought I’d make a quick #introduction I love the idea of a decentralized social media platform and have tried other alternatives to corporate platforms like Mastadon. That one didn’t seem to pan out in terms of censorship resistance. I’m hoping someone can discuss or answer some questions about Nostr. I’m curious about how relays work. My naive understanding is they don’t talk to each other? If so, that is a bit concerning in terms of how decentralized the platform will be. Anyone that knows more can chime in?
Welcome! Are you into a general overview or a technical perspective?
I suppose a bit of both since I’m new but don’t shy away from getting more technical. 😀
Sorry for the delay! @Doug Hoyte does a great job here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0FmzKp1CRk The first ~5 minutes I think is good for anyone. For the uber technical there's more. Sadly I don't haven't spent enough time learning how to explore it but hopefully that helps a litte
They can talk to each other!
Oh, maybe the Nostr site needs updating then. I got the impression relays only talk to clients and not each other. “What are relays? Relays are like the backend servers for Nostr. They allow Nostr clients to send them messages, and they may (or may not) store those messages and broadcast those messages to all other connected clients.” https://nostr.com/relays
Check out the latest Citadel Dispatch episode, they talk about all this
Your identity is portable. You're always in control. Relays are dumb, by design. All they do is store and serve notes. Some of them do talk to each other. If you started a relay, you could try to sync in all the notes that were ever created. Or not. That's the beauty of it all. Welcome!