techfeudalist on Nostr: Quick summary in case you’re wondering what this debate is all about. Right now, ...
Quick summary in case you’re wondering what this debate is all about.
Right now, nostr is very centralized. Potentially 90% or more of us are connected to a few massive relays.
These relays are an easy target for govts, with the possibility that their operators could be punished. This is obviously not good for free speech.
In this video, Will is talking about an “outbox” model. Nostr devs believe that moving to an inbox / outbox model will make nostr decentralized.
Right now, your app is “dumb”. It just uses the relays you’ve set. The inbox / outbox model will make your nostr app smarter. For example, your app may know which relays are used by your followers. Your app will then send your post to the relays that they use.
Likewise, to download messages from people you follow, your app will check first on your relays (they may have sent it to you) and/or your app can also check on their home relay.
This is definitely a theoretical improvement. Some remaining issues though:
1. How will apps know the best relays for the people you follow and for each of your followers? If apps need to ask the central relays, then nostr might stay centralized.
2. The apps will need to actively discourage the large relays and this will worsen the UX by making everything slower. Users may not like it and may just use apps that only use the large central relays.
3. Right now, the apps just check a few relays. This makes it easy on apps. With the new system, apps won’t know where messages are so they will need to check a lot more. This increases the load on both relays and apps. We don’t yet know how well this will work.
One common complaint we hear from Nostr haters is that there is no economic incentive to run relays or that the network will be centralized in a few central big relays. These claims often come from confusion or misunderstandings.
I think this 40s video will clear all the matters and answer all the criticisms:
If anyone doesn't understand or has a problem with this answer, please, I would like to hear it.
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