Relay Separation

[milefashell]

I was thinking that maybe we could specialize relays for certain usecases:

• Note relays
  • Stores only notes
  • We could also separate by topics
• Contact & meta relays
  • Stores only contact information and metadata
• Encrypted messaging relays
  • Stores encrypted messages
  • Can have some special "encrypted searching"

Benefits

• Relay performance can be improved
• Relay development can be more focused
  • Relay developers can only concentrate on few issues for the specialization
• Servers could be focused on one "service"
  • There can be different expectations for different type of relays, so we could give different hardware for them
  • E.g.: Contact & meta relays
    • Need less storage
    • probably would have less requests
    • require less bandwidth
• Maybe pay on "service" basis
• Easier to retrieve contact and meta details because less relays would have them
• Clients may need to query less relays for certain requests

Disadvantages

• Increases centralization
  • Counter argument: Still we can have as many special relays as we want
• Special relays could be better target for attacks, because we "single" them out
  • Counter argument: Data is anyway publicly available on relays
• Users may need to know which relay is good for what service
• Clients may need to use more relays
  • Counter argument: but certain requests would go only to few relays

What is your opinion?

[fiatjaf]

People and relays can do this if they want. I expect this kind of thing to happen eventually (not necessarily exactly like you put in here).