Hey, so the relays in Nostr work more like broadcast points rather than a direct peer-to-peer network. What that means is: When you want to send a message, you don’t send it straight to another person. Instead, you publish it to one or more relays. Relays are public servers that receive your message, store it, and then deliver it to anyone subscribed to them.

But relays don’t talk to each other, meaning they don’t automatically forward messages between themselves. That’s why clients usually connect to multiple relays at once to get the full feed.

Since relays are public, they can see the messages, but if you’re using encryption for private DMs, they only see encrypted data, not the actual content. So basically, it’s not direct person-to-person communication (P2P). It’s more like you’re “broadcasting” your message to several “loudspeakers” (the relays), and whoever is listening to those loudspeakers receives it. That’s why encrypting private messages is crucial — anyone can hear the “broadcast,” but they can’t understand it without the keys.

To sum up:

Nostr uses relays as message hubs, not direct user-to-user connections.

You send messages to those hubs, and other users get them by subscribing.

Relays don’t automatically share messages with each other.

Privacy depends on you encrypting your messages properly before sending.