[bawolff]

The story around relays seems to me like the most suspect part of this when it comes to scaling.

The protocol doesnt want users to run their own servers, but there also aren't really any incentives to run relays, so what happens when it gets big enough that running a relay is expensive or non-trivial? I feel like it would just fall back to users running their own servers like in mastadon.

[Kinrany]

That's not a problem if the server owners don't have any power over users.

[bawolff]

They still have to exist. The usual reason for existing is to exploit their power over users. When its cheap to host people will do it out of the goodness of their heart, once it hits scale the goodness tends to dissappear.