ExploreTrendingAnalytics
Nostr Archives
ExploreTrendingAnalytics
xte8d ago
The problem I see is that messages aren't "evenly spread across the network" but are concentrated on a few relays, and it even happens that some replies only reach certain relays. The result is centralisation on the most popular relays. The solution I see is the classic DHT, basically algorithmically spreading content across every node in the network, which will have storage and bandwidth quotas in its parameters. This leaves the administrator free to reject certain content or keep some in full, but fundamentally every message is split in chunks and some chunks are automatically spread across nodes. Historical examples include Usenet on one hand, as a decentralised paradigm, and eMule/KAD or ZeroNet for the distributed one. The solution I see for further improvement is to not have "Nostr client only", but client+relay in a single package, with potential support for Tor or ZeroNet or something similar for those behind a NAT. Those with an exposed host can provide a way to punch through holes in NAT for those who don't, but basically every client is also a relay and blossom server. I hope that's clearer now, and I don't see any bullshit or rudeness in what I'm writing. Meanwhile, as a fairly new user curious about Nostr and from the old-school *nix background, I see a tense community that's not very interested in the rest of the world, which isn't a good thing for achieving success.
💬 1 replies

Thread context

Root: 0000c130b638…

Replying to: 2c42182ec792…

Replies (1)

fiatjaf8d ago
Sorry about that, I'm tired of seeing people claim Nostr isn't decentralized always for the wrong reasons and never expand on their claims. But in your case I think you really misunderstood things. The idea of Nostr isn't that messages are evenly spread across the network. I do not believe that is the correct approach at all. Although nothing prevents someone from trying and would be fun to see more p2p spreading of Nostr events I don't think that will scale, so I wouldn't focus on it. Instead the approach Nostr takes is to let each person publish to one or more servers they choose. Decentralization happens by not requiring publishers to be present on a central location, but by allowing readers to go to whatever location necessary in order to fetch their content. So even if everybody is using the same relay at one point, the network is still "decentralized" as long as clients are doing their job correctly and anyone can move out of that central relay anytime they want and start publishing to his own personal relay in his basement: all their followers will continue to get his updates automatically, now from the new relay. It's explained visually here: https://how-nostr-works.pages.dev/#/outbox
00
0
0 sats