xte on Nostr: That's a broader problem in Nostr design: clients need to be relays too in a single ...

That's a broader problem in Nostr design: clients need to be relays too in a single app, so we don't end up with such massive imbalances between giant relays and tiny ones. Otherwise, Nostr will be decentralised in name only; in practice, it'll be just like XMPP, which was popular as long as Google Messenger (I can't remember the exact name) used it, and then pretty much vanished once they stopped.

Unfortunately, I fear there's no real desire to understand how to structure a truly decentralised network. We do need entities to help with NAT traversal, absolutely, because many people are behind NAT, but then clients should simply have a default setting for storage and bandwidth available to the network being relays as well. We could have WoT filtering if we want, or explicit blocking of someone's content (even using DBACL and the like) if we want, but the rest should be decided algorithmically and spread out. Evolving towards a handful of major hubs while the rest of the relays remain obscure isn't decentralisation, it's the death from the start.

At some point, some big relay will be bought out by some who want to censor; most people will stay there anyway because that's where the bulk of other humans are, and you'll get the same effect we're seeing with Reddit compared to Lemmy.