I originally had this grand capitalist dream: build a premium paid relay, cover the bills, maybe even buy myself a coffee that isn’t the gas-station kind for once.
But the more I thought about it, the more it felt… kinda gross. A couple bucks a month is pocket change to me in the US, but in a lot of the world that’s a day’s wages or a week of mobile data. Charging for access started feeling like putting a toll booth on the off-ramp from the corporate internet.

So paid relay is officially off the table. I want this thing to run on Value-for-Value: if you love it and can spare a few sats, great, the relay gets to eat. If you can’t, you still get the exact same spam-resistant, reliable firehose. No tiers, no “pro” features, no guilt trips.

Now the fun challenge: how do we keep the bots and spammers out without turning the place into an exclusive country club?

Some half-baked ideas I’ve been kicking around:

• Classic invite tree (you get in, you can invite a few trusted frens, web-of-trust style)
• Small one-time “proof of humanity” sat drop (like 1k–5k sats) that gets refunded after X days of good behavior, cheap enough for most, annoying enough for bots
• Report-based reputation: 3–5 credible reports → auto-mute pending human review
• Rate limits that loosen up the longer an npub has been well-behaved
• NIP-05 or Lightning address verification gives you higher limits (still free, just proves you’re not a script kiddie in a basement)

Basically I want the friction to land only on the bad actors, not the kid in Venezuela who just wants to post without getting drowned in penis-pill ads.

Throw your ideas at me, the crazier the better. If it works on paper and doesn’t screw over the little guy, I’ll probably try it.

Boosts appreciated so we can crowdsource the least-bad solution. Let’s build the relay that actually lives up to the “for everyone” promise.

Thanks!