reply on: Would you pay a subscription for a high-quality Nostr relay? \ stacker news ~nostr

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheBTCManual 24 Feb 2023 \ on: Would you pay a subscription for a high-quality Nostr relay? nostr

I think it depends on access and scale, if you're a massive account with thousands of followers, maybe even millions one day, then yes a paid subscription relay that can help aggregate too would make sense and be worth it to give that account a smoother experience

I also think that subs would make sense in a world where there are application specific relays, lets say social relays, gaming relays and I don't know whatever niche content requires custom events then yeah

I also think subscription relays make sense if you can offer the user hosting for files, lets say YouTubers or something

Opportunity costs

I think that the subscription relay's USP should appeal to cost saving, so lets say you're on all these relays pushing you redundant information how much of that eats into your bandwidth so if you're a mobile user, it could be costly to nostr from your phone where this relay can bring down the cost

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @brynrussell OP 24 Feb 2023

I think you hit the nail on the head with opportunity cost. The main goal should always be to provide (superior) value to the customer. No customer, no business. If the relay can save bandwidth and make it easier to provide a good Nostr experience then it's a win-win.

I like the application specific relay comment as well, I hadn't really thought about that aspect but that makes sense.

The aggregation side seems to have value based on this and other comments. I wonder though if you end up successful, much like you would be taking revenue from the one-time paid relays, existing and new Nostr clients likewise might use your aggregation relay to provide a good experience for their users (and save costs).

Which means your relay would get less income and ultimately the sub-amount would need to compensate for this. Perhaps a value-for-value system could work with the sub here as well, where clients would be grateful and occasionally donate for using your relay in their app. Providing it's "high-quality" and people want to use it.

Or what do you guys think?

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 24 Feb 2023

I guess we will see cannibalisation of income from relays where there is too much overlap, but I don't see this as a bad thing, I see that as a sign that this market is serviced and you move on to the underserviced market, the smaller relays will always be chasing the niche interests

Bigger HPR (High-performance Relays) will compete with larger categories, if we only take social media IE Twitter/Reddit style posting, I think there's a place for everyone, small relays would be servicing more obscure categories like collecting antiques or some random thing, (we still have so many of these forums up today)

Then HPRs could focus on broader categories of appeal like Gaming, Movies, Books, stuff where a lot of people overlap, have an interest, and create content

I think client HPRs would source from other HPRs and smaller relays looking for content that gets the most engagement, and feed it up to their relay and client, because their incentive isn't to house content but to serve content that brings in the most users and increases time on site

As for payment, I think yes some HPRs would take up a bunch of the subs fees, but I wonder couldn't they request indexing from other relays for popular content and then pay them for doing that discovery, so the ones getting the most income from subs still feed relays who do the work sourcing content