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The thing with Nostr is that the protocol spec expressly forbids relays from forwarding messages to each other. What this means is that users trying to reach e
by treyd 25d ago
The thing with Nostr is that the protocol spec expressly forbids relays from forwarding messages to each other.
What this means is that users trying to reach each other need to shotgun messages to many relays, or congregate around specific ones. User profile data will list the relays they listen on, but this suffers from the problem of sticky defaults and makes client authors the kingmakers.
There's lots of centralization pressures like this that the protocol maintainers don't have a good answer to. They tout the simplicity of the protocol, which is often a virtue, but they overdid it and made the protocol too simple to achieve its goals.
- therein 25d agoWell put, that's exactly what I think of Nostr as well.
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 25d agothere are relays built exactly for this, for rebroadcasting. You can do whatever you want in nostr btw. this is also not entirely needed since you publish a list of relays you use, and so clients publish notes for you to them and you read from the relays of people you interact with. there are many different people/teams working on different aspects of nostr, there are no protocol maintainers.
- abhayraizada 25d agoit doesn't explicitly forbdit it. It just doesn't spec it out, because it doesn't need it for the protocol to work. There are already many relays and clients that do just this.
- dannyw 25d agoI think GP's point (which I agree with) is that the functionality is almost essential. When it's not part of the spec, then you end up with differing off-spec implementations, and again, centralization risk. This would be like the HTTP protocol not defining `POST`, and leaving it up to servers and clients to implement it based on however it feels like. I really like the ideals behind Nostr, but I think its implementation and execution could be better.
- grumbel 25d agoIt would be more analog to HTTP not specing out how CDNs should work, or Usenet not specing out how DejaNews is going to work. It's infrastructure stuff neither the client nor the simple server has to care about. The Nostr spec covers what matters, cryptographic identities and unique message ids, that make dumb relays that duplicating messages from elsewhere possible (an area where HTTP or Activity Pub fail at).
- inigyou 24d agoIt's actually more analogous to HTTP saying that proxies and reverse proxies are banned.
- davotoula 25d agoBut part of the protocol is that user profiles also list the relays where to find their content (where their posts go to) and a second user connects to those relays to fetch their content directly?
- nunobrito 25d ago> protocol spec expressly forbids relays from forwarding messages to each other. That statement is false and if you disagree: please provide a source. There is no such restriction on the NIP (protocol guidelines). I have been writing NOSTR software since years and there was NEVER such restriction in place. In fact, wouldn't even make sense because some relays (e.g. Primal) are super-aggregators for smaller relays. > users trying to reach each other need to shotgun messages to many relays This is a false statement. NIP 65 provides a list of which servers the users declares to be using. This way readers for that user know at which door (server) to knock and ask for updates.
- notarobot123 25d ago> sticky defaults... makes client authors the kingmakers. Isn't this true of any protocol (to a greater or lesser degree)?
- digitalbase 25d agoWhat the hell are you talking about? What forbids? The idea of nostr is that you can do whatever the you like. An open protocol. There is no forbidding of anything
- inigyou 24d ago> There is no forbidding of anything Promise not to prosecute me if I spam the network?
- siwatanejo 25d ago> spec expressly forbids relays from forwarding messages to each other. And how do you exactly envision enforcement? Ohhhh, you copied some bits, you going to jail!!
- Cameri 24d agoFalse. The protocol doesn’t forbid it. Theres actually a negentropy NIP for relay sync. Did you read the actual protocol or are you just making things up on HN?
- inigyou 24d agoI also remember reading somewhere that relays aren't allowed to copy other relays.
- hardran3 24d agoThere are relays built with copying from other relays as a main feature. Personal use only https://github.com/barrydeen/haven https://github.com/barrydeen/haven This one will copy every note of every person you follow, plus their follows. https://github.com/barrydeen/wot-relay https://github.com/barrydeen/wot-relay