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Nostr has no economic spam countering mechanism on the protocol level (the protocol is inherently free, like SMTP) which means it's up to relays to fight spam and that's an inevitable centralizing force. Fortunately the protocol could yet be overhauled to fix this using something like HTTP 402 (i.e. make everything paid). Till then the network is zombie walking towards an inevitable censorship reality once it's big enough and spam is burdensome enough.

He's already wrong. Gossip is a huge improvement though.

Peter Todd's right. Nostr has become more centralized and isn't as censorship-resistant as people claim. The neglect of the relay network is part of it, with most relay operators dropping off. A few remain, but it’s barely holding on. This was kind of clear from the start—Nostr is just a subset of HTTP, so anything Nostr can do, HTTP can too, and actually more with storage and real-time capabilities. How decentralized either is depends on how they’re used. Nostr's centralization, like HTTP's, was always possible, and the article’s author had a big hand in that. Still useful, just not as advertised.

Who DAFUQ is Peter Todd? Damn it.

I never trust anyone with two first names.

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