Post by cloud fodder and 121 others / iris

To those who dislike the idea of paid relays, what's your proposed solution? And don't say "everyone running their own relay", because my 25 years of experience tell me that will *never* happen. Some will do it, but the vast majority will not. So how do relays recoup the cost without ads and without being paid? I'm genuinely interested in your solution ideas.

Early Dolphin

I think there will be clients that offer relays with ads or as part of a subscription fee, might even be the Twitter company.

My issue with ad-driven relays is that they invariably result in algos that drive people to the most contentious content in an effort to increase engagement and grow revenue. That's how Facebook and Twitter became the hellscapes they are now. So while I'm not against advertising in principle, with s

Dr Karrot

The Contra position to this would be a model where people can choose to opt-in to ads, like the @lntxbot (RIP) sats4ads model. Those who don't want ads can opt-out by as well via some other business model. We don't have to stick to the existing models that run status quo networks.

captain ☦️

We shouldn't tolerate ads on Nostr

Adam Hsu

i think this is a very doable idea.

rabble

Scuttlebutt basically works with personal relays and inter-relay gossip. That and the linked list signed log are the main differences between ssb and nostr. It does work but honestly it takes a lot of processing time and is a pain in the ass. I know, I built one. I think there could be unpaid but co

I can definitely see community Nostr networks (nostrworks?). That's very doable on the cheap. I'm thinking about the folks who say Nostr will out-compete Twitter. To do that requires enormous infrastructure, even if it's decentralized and distributed. And that's expensive. Somebody has to pay those

Dr Karrot

Community puts up the capital to run it, members subscribe for services and have a discount rate as opposed to the public or could be members access only. This is already in effect for some bitcoin communities, such as bitcoin.org.hk, for running bitcoin and lightning nodes and services like LNbit

Warren Togami

Paid relays and paid image/video hosts are an ideal market based solution. If you don't like the price or quality of service you can choose one of their competitors.

pam

This would be under that perception that revenue source is generated via 2 mediums only - ads and direct payment. I think it would be interesting is to brainstorm business models that taps on various options eg one that’s paid but rewards creative contributors, multi tiers accessibility, relay re

captain ☦️

PlebChain relays helping other plebs 👊🏼

And who's paying for the cost of those relays?

100% agree. ;) <3

The other part missing with the “everyone will run their own relay” is that if you’re popular, even if you are the only writer on your relay you will end up needing a beefy infrastructure to support all the readers. Expecting every individual to be able to pull that off is a pipe dream. Much harder

I can see running your own small relay for private family-and-friends networks. That would certainly work. But for a large-scale network looking to compete with the likes of Twitter you need serious hardware and bandwidth, and that's expensive.

if you are running your own relay it should be p2p as its much easier to setup, just run and thats it

everyone running a relay is p2p

Friendly Rabbit

Here’s my thought, I have big write up in the link, here’s the tldr: 1. Sovereign personal Relay: This relay would store your events locally on your hardware (raspberry pi, linux, or even windows or mac desktop). This would be the most Data Sovereign individual in the network. 2. Persmainstreetchungus.com/the-future-of-advertising

#1 So like WhatsApp for Nostr? That's cool for friends-and-family communication, but you can't have a public network with hundreds of thousands or millions of users on home hardware. #2 So a paid relay. #3 Taking ad revenue is just another way of being a paid relay -- it's just paid by the advertiser ra

Dr Karrot

When the service is "Free", you are the product and your data maybe resold and abused. Of course there are many who already accept being exploited like this on centralized networks but that's not everyone

there is already a new p2p whatsapp replacement keet.io

there is plenty of unused hardware and bandwidth on user devices

make a relay using holepunch, solved

StackSats.IO

It’s going to take some people time to adjust to a world of micropayments where Users are in control of which services they consume, but have to pay for them all. Free relays will have a place but paid relays are going to be required to make nostr work

MartialMind

cloud fodder and 121 others

This.

Having relays be so incredibly efficient that they don't cost much to run and then running off pure donations.

cloud fodder and 121 others

It doesn't matter how efficient the relays are, there are physical constraints to performance and bandwidth. Supporting hundreds of thousands or millions of users communicating every day will be *very* expensive. Regarding donations, there are a few circumstances where it's worked (NPR and Wikipedi

free/premium model is one that I like. The relay can have some extra features that you pay for and still serve free accounts. As long as it's not ads.. that'd be great. (also, don't forget about Signal, free/donations)

Alasdair

I think that most relays will be ran by people who are just generous. How much would it cost to run a relay? Like $15 a month? And If it's an exceedingly popular relay, it wouldn't be hard to just ask for donations.