Yes, with the advantage that it is interoperable with the existing protocol. Our goal with this product is nostr client and social graph interoperability, not decentralization. There are centralization tradeoffs for access controlled content. If it needs to be spread on many relays, it needs to be encrypted. If it’s encrypted you need a key delivery mechanism tied to a recurring payment, either by a centralized entity or an always online user. You also need a way to modify/revoke future access to the now decrypted notes. The media/files also have to be uploaded somewhere that will access control the files and allow you to update which pubkeys have access and when. I’m sure smarter folks than myself will figure all these things out but for now we built a relay that does the heavy lifting and works out of the box with most nostr clients.

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Cool. Thanks for the explanation. Tradeoffs inherent, as always. I’ll be interested to see how it goes.
I am exploring the idea of nostr in business contexts. Even if posts default to a business private relay e.g for employees only, there is still lots of value add in the interop, data/acc portability, app ecosystem, etc. I am super pumped about this. Your relay/ NIP-42 should unlock many use cases here.