A Look at Outbox Relays

Managing outbox relays on Nostr is simple, but one of the most important things to understand about the using the protocol. Your choices can greatly affect whether or not your notes are visible to your followers. You may want your notes to reach as many people as possible or you may want to limit your exposure. This is for you to decide, but understanding how to choose your outbox relays that best suit your situation can help you to achieve your goals. Firstly, it is important to understand that your outbox relays are the simple servers to which you will publish your notes (and other events). Clients will fetch your notes from those relays. Some clients will do so automatically and while others may require users to choose where to retrieve this data. Some relays are more broadly accessed across the network than others, while some have very limited access. You can self host, rent space, pay for write access, join restricted groups, or use free public service relays.

You may want to consider is how you want to use Nostr. In a social media context, you might want to publish to large, public relays to ensure a broad availability of your . Often these will be default outbox relays, set within a client when you first set up your profile. These will publish your profile and relay list to a wide network. These default settings are fine for most users and can be adjusted as you explore other methods. Eventually, you will want to choose 2-3 relays that are reliable and spam-resistant. It is often recommended that you publish to one "large" relay and one "small" relay, for a balance of reach and availability. A 3rd could be your own private relay or a specialized relay that you makes your notes available to a a niche community.

You may also want your notes be published to only smaller relays that restrict community size, maintain very tight spam controls, are topic-based, or any other plethora of possibilities. These option are often paid or otherwise have criteria to be met for write access. You can explore different relays by browsing feeds in any relay feed client. If at anytime, you want to move or change where you publish, you simply switch out the relay URL. Doing so frequently can cause multiple versions of your relay list to exist across the network, so I wouldn't suggest doing so often, but experiment and find what works best for you. Once you have are happy with your experience, leave them be until you need to change. The list will become more evenly distributed, as you post and communicate.

In the event that a relay operator removes your write privileges, for any reason, you can switch to other relays or host your own. Your profile will continue to exist on the network and your relay list will update upon publishing the new settings. In most cases, your followers will have no problem finding your notes. In extreme cases, you may need to let people know where you are publishing so that they may start looking there. Either way, this is where Nostr's censorship resistance shines. It is impossible to be "banned from Nostr". If you believe that your words may invoke disciplinary actions from relay operators, begin with simple self-hosting of a relay, like Haven, in addition the options described above.

In short, you shouldn't need to worry about your outbox relays too much, but in the event that you need to, or want to better maintain control of your data, you may want to explore some of the many different options.

For a quick relay setup demo, watch this video.