Nobody pays for relays because there are free and public relays available. Why would anyone pay to write to a random relay if they can get the same benefit for free?
I wouldn't mind having an ecosystem only with relays that you have to be invited to, or pay, or do some other thing to prove you're worth writing to that. It would make everything much more interesting.
But if someone is willing to keep running nos.lol for free forever then just use that.
There are other reasons to pay for relays (to make and read good relay feeds, to have clean inboxes and provide clean threads to people who read your content, to be part of a high-signal relay for people who pay), but not many people are aware of these cool possibilities.
Even then, at the current Nostr size, we can easily just run on some cheap whitelisted relays and everybody should still be able to talk freely.
npub180…jh6w6
2026-09-15 22:33:46 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…7z0c
Author Public Key
npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6Published at
2026-09-15 22:33:46 UTCEvent JSON
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"created_at": 1789511626,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
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"wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com/",
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"content": "Nobody pays for relays because there are free and public relays available. Why would anyone pay to write to a random relay if they can get the same benefit for free?\n\nI wouldn't mind having an ecosystem only with relays that you have to be invited to, or pay, or do some other thing to prove you're worth writing to that. It would make everything much more interesting.\n\nBut if someone is willing to keep running nos.lol for free forever then just use that.\n\nThere are other reasons to pay for relays (to make and read good relay feeds, to have clean inboxes and provide clean threads to people who read your content, to be part of a high-signal relay for people who pay), but not many people are aware of these cool possibilities.\n\nEven then, at the current Nostr size, we can easily just run on some cheap whitelisted relays and everybody should still be able to talk freely.",
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}