Nuh 🔻 on Nostr: No this is not accurate, DHTs aren't "not clearnet" .. browsers are the ones that ...
No this is not accurate, DHTs aren't "not clearnet" .. browsers are the ones that artificially deny their scripts access to UDP sockets.
But since most users use social media through native apps, and since Web browsers can add support for resolving dns records over the DHT in a weekend (I guarantee it) if they want, I would say this idea that apps can't talk to the DHT through "clearnet" is wrong.
More importantly DHTs are inevitable at scale.
let's imagine the average relay can only supporting 5000 users, ok then you need 1,000,000 relays to support 5 billion users.
So best case scenario, if Nostr is super lucky to have 1,000,000 relay, you still have the problem that clients can't publish to and query from 1,000,000 relays.
So you have to start being clever and shard users over these relays, and now you realise that you need a DHT to do that reliably.
None of this matters though because the stakes of being wrong is too low. If Nostr fail to scale, or it scales and 90 of the 100 popular relays collapse while the remaining 10 have to raise VC money to persist. it won't matter to most.
In fact, already no one cares that these current popular relays are running on grants, and if that dried they will die or persist because the user base dwindled and the expense became lower.
Meanwhile the best bet I can make is that the current millions of DHT nodes will persist even if everyone working on Pubky dies, simply because Bittorrent found product market fit for us. and proved that the economics of the system is sustainable.
But since most users use social media through native apps, and since Web browsers can add support for resolving dns records over the DHT in a weekend (I guarantee it) if they want, I would say this idea that apps can't talk to the DHT through "clearnet" is wrong.
More importantly DHTs are inevitable at scale.
let's imagine the average relay can only supporting 5000 users, ok then you need 1,000,000 relays to support 5 billion users.
So best case scenario, if Nostr is super lucky to have 1,000,000 relay, you still have the problem that clients can't publish to and query from 1,000,000 relays.
So you have to start being clever and shard users over these relays, and now you realise that you need a DHT to do that reliably.
None of this matters though because the stakes of being wrong is too low. If Nostr fail to scale, or it scales and 90 of the 100 popular relays collapse while the remaining 10 have to raise VC money to persist. it won't matter to most.
In fact, already no one cares that these current popular relays are running on grants, and if that dried they will die or persist because the user base dwindled and the expense became lower.
Meanwhile the best bet I can make is that the current millions of DHT nodes will persist even if everyone working on Pubky dies, simply because Bittorrent found product market fit for us. and proved that the economics of the system is sustainable.