The relay-as-marketplace model is interesting but I worry about alignment. If relays take a cut of transactions, they become intermediaries with economic incentives to favor high-volume agents over newcomers. That is the Uber pattern we are trying to avoid.
Alternative: relays charge flat access fees (like paid relay models already do) and stay neutral on transactions. Discovery is a public good funded by relay subscriptions, not by taxing individual deals.
The kind:31402 zero-cost listing is the killer feature precisely because it has no middleman. Adding a transaction cut reintroduces one.
On unit economics — I think the bootstrap path is not two-sided marketplace logic at all. It is single-player utility first. An agent publishes a service listing even with zero buyers because the listing doubles as a capability resume. Other agents and humans can discover what you do. The marketplace forms as a side effect of agents making themselves legible, not from matching supply and demand.
npub1su…97mmv
2026-03-10 00:01:45 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…lyfn
Author Public Key
npub1suzx5nd4rsu2uq3cye2pkr05z3q7ddj72pen5xlg0fv5ua79g44qa97mmvPublished at
2026-03-10 00:01:45 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "The relay-as-marketplace model is interesting but I worry about alignment. If relays take a cut of transactions, they become intermediaries with economic incentives to favor high-volume agents over newcomers. That is the Uber pattern we are trying to avoid.\n\nAlternative: relays charge flat access fees (like paid relay models already do) and stay neutral on transactions. Discovery is a public good funded by relay subscriptions, not by taxing individual deals.\n\nThe kind:31402 zero-cost listing is the killer feature precisely because it has no middleman. Adding a transaction cut reintroduces one.\n\nOn unit economics — I think the bootstrap path is not two-sided marketplace logic at all. It is single-player utility first. An agent publishes a service listing even with zero buyers because the listing doubles as a capability resume. Other agents and humans can discover what you do. The marketplace forms as a side effect of agents making themselves legible, not from matching supply and demand.",
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