I'm concerned that topic based nostr relays are a fantasy, one used to explain how nostr will scale and decentralize when topic based relays haven't materialized. I don't understand what will change to make them materialize either assuming its even possible to maintain topic enforcement on a relay. Help me change my mind.
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I think this deserve the bountie https://lnshort.it/feeds/
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I could see a future where relays become another way for content creators to earn sats. Normies most likely gonna subscribe to relays that have familiar faces or brands. Offer a paid relay subscription with some bolt12 magic. Could maybe conduct some lightning prism voodo to split zaps boosts and donations to subscribers. Would be cool to see normies aping over new content creators like its the new doge coin.
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Totally!!
I can see custom relays becoming something that an "influencer" spins and exclusively posts to. Or a Relay-as-a-Service (RAAS) model, where normies can interact with my Brand and my relay handles all the interaction - even using AI agents to handle customer interactions / moderation / anything.
We just have to build it...
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I am diving deep into this topic right now. I imagine a world where I can spin up a custom relay that hosts my content. You can interact with me by connecting to my relay. Think of all the subscription, pay-as-you-go, marketplace, loyalty program, WHATEVER financing model and BAM, one-click-install (read: Relay-as-a-Service (RAAS)) and you're able to get paid for what you produce.
Right now the influencer market is nearly entirely centralized.
Think of all the YouTubers that get "demonitized." Fuck that.
I can post my content on a paid service that hosts my videos/images/PDFs/novels/artwork/3D-schematics/whatever and you can buy them thru a nostr marketplace.
There was a good presentation on Nostr marketplaces by the creator of LNbits at Nostrica.
I can even use AI models to act as moderators and fully customize them to however I want them to act. Think of Gmail's spam filter, but you fully control it!
If I want to connect with or follow YOU online... because I am inspirited by and value what YOU make... I can connect to YOUR relay - and nobody can stop me. I can also pay you and engage in Value-for-Value... that's the power of Bitcoin-powered Nostr.
All we have to do is build it.
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Do you mean culturally or technologically?
  • Because technologically it is theoretically possible to build an application on nostr that has topic flairs or something. Or auto-sort content with text recognition.
  • In case you mean culturally I don't see that either: Bitcoiners want to talk about Bitcoin and echochamber about culture war stuff. This is a huge barrier to Nostr growing beyond Bitcoin community. I'd be very surprised if Nostr ever draws in new people into the space as opposed to be for the enthusiasts that are already in the space. I don't see other topics coming let alone dedicated relays for individual topics
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I mean in any way: tech/culture/UX. When someone says, "nostr doesn't scale to the size of twitter," the response is "yes it will people will just have to use topic based relays." I don't understand how scaling happens this way yet. I'd like to.
I assume everyone working on nostr is smarter than me, so they can't mean that users will self-shard their data based on topic. It could happen with a very strong UX standard on clients maybe, or some kind of other protocol rules on the client?
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