Why would one put time into developing a paid relay if not only no one is going to pay for it but even theoretical incentives to operate a relay do not exist? Thats what I am (was) talking about - first we, as a community, have to think about the incentives and try to solve them before thinking about enterprise relays, or super mega efficient 5MB relays But almost no one in the community does not see the lack of incentives as a problem. Judging by your answer, you too

My man, I started this whole discussion. I see the bad incentives from free relays as a massive problem. But there are a few relays making money now. So, somebody else found the answer to the why that you are looking for and is making it work. If you need the community to figure out how to make your company work, your company is worthless. That being said, I have been helping several relays getting paid with specs for one-click payments and renewals on demand. So, there are people trying to help if you are interested.

The issue with this strategy is that for the vast majority of new users, paid relays are an extra barrier and cause inertia, and therefore, limits or reverses growth. Compare this with the bluesky growth hack where they had big servers that could handle up to a million users from the get-go. The result was that Bluesky went from smaller than nostr, to over 10x bigger. Advocating for paid relays is a poor strategy, because only a few will get paid, and not enough to keep the lights on. That will lead to fewer users, and less revenue. That would act as a further centralizing force in nostr. View quoted note →