It depends.
fiatjaf (npub180c…h6w6) made a push for making relays front-and-center and insisted that this needed to be nostr direction and paid out bounties for things like 'seen on' information.
IMHO for general microblogging relays are invisible. For DMs too. Nobody cares about the relays when you are just conversing deep down in some thread.
But for other apps (relay-centric chat, browing relay-specific feeds) the relays have to be known to the user. This is like a web browser: the URL is not invisible, the user goes to the URL they want to see.
So it very much depends on the nostr app in question.
In the context of this thread though, relays cannot be invisible. People have to choose their relays, often making decisions like "should I pay for service here", "is this relay reputable", "what does my son recomend as the best relay".
Mike Dilger /
npub1ac…9p35c
2024-12-19 20:29:07
in reply to nevent1q…d005
Author Public Key
npub1acg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeyse9p35cPublished at
2024-12-19 20:29:07Event JSON
{
"id": "000060397eb142eb8a72687e00db900ea8d2ead77e4eaad0f7644f2ab890f2b0",
"pubkey": "ee11a5dff40c19a555f41fe42b48f00e618c91225622ae37b6c2bb67b76c4e49",
"created_at": 1734640147,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"p",
"3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d"
],
[
"p",
"765da722b1810e50fd0f111c16d15222115bee8b76fa2f14487c4ba817c600e6"
],
[
"e",
"0000389803c6a2a3227031631d0cb5ec152b687440ea1cdecb9dff50679c68b0",
"wss://offchain.pub/",
"root",
"ee11a5dff40c19a555f41fe42b48f00e618c91225622ae37b6c2bb67b76c4e49"
],
[
"e",
"e1bc67154e178bc76a23ec34f1df231b3d94a5372994281368a0755bb85fd064",
"wss://nos.lol/",
"reply",
"765da722b1810e50fd0f111c16d15222115bee8b76fa2f14487c4ba817c600e6"
],
[
"nonce",
"1537228672809132464",
"16"
]
],
"content": "It depends.\n\nnostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 made a push for making relays front-and-center and insisted that this needed to be nostr direction and paid out bounties for things like 'seen on' information.\n\nIMHO for general microblogging relays are invisible. For DMs too. Nobody cares about the relays when you are just conversing deep down in some thread.\n\nBut for other apps (relay-centric chat, browing relay-specific feeds) the relays have to be known to the user. This is like a web browser: the URL is not invisible, the user goes to the URL they want to see.\n\nSo it very much depends on the nostr app in question.\n\nIn the context of this thread though, relays cannot be invisible. People have to choose their relays, often making decisions like \"should I pay for service here\", \"is this relay reputable\", \"what does my son recomend as the best relay\".",
"sig": "f8f1768c30c8055452e3913c7c44e7c7683d0c2257d5cb7b8f873610a33c0ad0075e6238d485772e0bb4b5fc78dfbdee053d0d9fa7d6f90b95940b2b12b9b8fb"
}