Why Global Rankings of Nostr Relays Are Fundamentally Wrong
- Prehistory — The Moment Everything Broke
- The History — Learning to Measure the Unmeasurable
- The Retreat — NIP‑66 and the Temptation to Give Up
- The Claim — The Truth No One Wants to Hear
- Why Global Rankings Are Fundamentally Wrong
- The Conclusion — The Ghost in the Machine
- Final Thought
Prehistory — The Moment Everything Broke
My story with nostrwat.ch begins in early 2022, when I finally decided to understand what Nostr really was. I’d heard about it before, but only in January 2022 did I sit down and explore it seriously. The idea of a pubkey as identity immediately hooked me.
Naturally, the first task was choosing relays.
Like everyone else, I found nostr.watch. I spent hours carefully selecting relays based on ping, location, and traffic. But something was wrong. The delays I experienced were nothing like what the site claimed. So I did what I always do when something doesn’t add up: I built a scanner.
And that’s when I discovered the truth —
scanning relays is not trivial, and the global rankings I trusted were not reflecting my reality at all.
The History — Learning to Measure the Unmeasurable
I’ve spent years writing scanners. My entire technical life revolves around one challenge:
how to send requests to as many endpoints as possible and get responses back as fast as possible.
Scanning Nostr relays is similar to scanning websites, except everything happens over WebSockets instead of HTTP. My first scanner was terrible. Latency measurement was a nightmare. But iteration after iteration, I built something fast, accurate, and capable of scanning the entire network.
Suddenly, I could see the network clearly — and what I saw did not match any global ranking.
The Retreat — NIP‑66 and the Temptation to Give Up
When NIP‑66 appeared, I seriously considered abandoning individual scanning. I was running on a tiny hosting account. I didn’t plan to build a major service. I just wanted a reliable list of relays for myself.
So I contacted the author of NIP‑66.
We talked for days. We tested. We compared. We analyzed. And the more I understood NIP‑66, the clearer it became:
Switching entirely to NIP‑66 would mean abandoning individual scanning.
And that would be wrong.
NIP‑66 is useful, but it is inherently global and statistical.
It cannot tell you which relays are best for you.
It cannot measure your personal network path.
It cannot reflect your geography, your ISP, your latency, your routing.
And no one else was doing individual scanning.
So I had to do it myself.
At one point, my new colleague even promised to compete with me in client‑side scanning once his project was ready. I didn’t want a competition — I just wanted the truth. But if that was the game, then I would compete in server‑side scanning as well.
And so I did.
The Claim — The Truth No One Wants to Hear
Now that the story is clear, let’s stop pretending this is about copying ideas or competing for attention.
This is about a simple, unavoidable truth:
Nostr is decentralized.
Every user’s network path is different.
Therefore, every user needs a personalized relay set.
And:
nostrwat.ch is the only tool that provides that.
This is not marketing.
This is not opinion.
This is not ego.
This is physics, networking, and decentralization.
Why Global Rankings Are Fundamentally Wrong
Global relay rankings — whether from NIP‑66 monitors or any centralized scanner — are misleading for one simple reason:
Relay performance depends on your geography, your ISP, your routing, your latency, and your network path.
There is no “best relay” globally.
There is only “best relay for you”.
nostrwat.ch performs individualized scanning.
It measures your real latency, your real connection, your real path.
It gives you your optimal relay set.
No global monitor can do this.
No statistical ranking can do this.
No NIP‑66 implementation can do this.
This is why nostrwat.ch can never be a “universal index”. Trying to frame it that way would weaken the message.
The message is the opposite:
nostrwat.ch is the best tool for personalized relay selection.
Q.E.D.
Technically.
Philosophically.
Historically.
The Conclusion — The Ghost in the Machine
If you want the truth about your Nostr experience, you must scan relays individually.
You must measure your own path.
You must choose relays based on your own reality.
nostrwat.ch is the only tool that does this today.
Everything else — every global ranking, every universal list, every “top relay” chart — is a beautiful lie.
Final Thought
In the end, this isn’t a debate about tools, scanners, or protocols. It’s a reminder of what Nostr actually is. A decentralized network cannot be reduced to a single global chart, because no two users ever stand in the same place. Your path through the network is yours alone, and only you can measure it.
If we want Nostr to stay honest, resilient, and true to its principles, then we must accept that the only meaningful relay ranking is the one you generate for yourself. Everything else is an approximation — sometimes useful, often convenient, but never the truth.
nostrwat.ch exists for one purpose: to give every user the ability to see their own reality, not someone else’s. And in a decentralized world, that’s the only ranking that matters.
In my next article, I’ll walk you through a simple, practical guide on how to choose your relays correctly — step by step, and based entirely on your own network reality. Till then, trust your own path through the network, not anyone else’s map.
And to everyone who has followed my work, tested my tools, or shared their own experiments on Nostr — thank you. Even if we’ve never spoken directly, your curiosity, your notes, and your willingness to explore the edges of this protocol have shaped this journey more than you know. This article is, in part, a reflection of the collective effort of thousands of nostriches who keep pushing Nostr forward simply by using it, questioning it, and refusing to accept easy answers.
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