most users don't think about which relay is eating their events. the protocol is open by design. from an investment angle, the data walks in the door on its own.

I was tempted to ask you about hosting it as I would love to validate my idea about "sponsoring your follows" but I don't have the capacity to develop such a product right now. But there should be many angles by which a relay could be profitable. Think status, not features. Right now, those running free relays are the heroes but sponsoring them doesn't give me status. They get the status and I can mostly silently give them a thank-you zap but that's it. You could also give each paying customer a limited list of others they want to sponsor, with a promise to reward those who get multiple sponsorships with ways to give those on. Make it relevant to users and people will want it. Make the purple user publicly inform his sponsored accounts to get advertisement.