- InputA publisher’s versioned event and a defined audience.
- HandlingFan out only to eligible receivers under the event’s retention rules.
- OutputDistributed copies with provenance; individual receipt needs separate evidence.
Delivery, permissions and correction
- Permissions
- Public and permissioned audiences differ. Membership changes require explicit access and key-rotation rules.
- Failure
- Some recipients may miss an event. Replay, expiry and duplicate handling must not disguise partial delivery as universal receipt.
- Correction & evidence
- Publish a linked correction or superseding version. Preserve the relationship to the original event and its author.
Broadcasts and milestones
RELAY can describe public announcements, permissioned group updates, creator posts and signed milestones. A milestone should carry its author, version, time, source and intended audience so receivers can understand what they are seeing.
Feed and CDN have separate jobs
A Nostr-inspired social feed could combine one-publisher events distributed by RELAY, personalised selection by AXIOM and media cached near its audience by a CDN. Each answers a different question. Many-publisher public-post discovery and interaction are a proposed MESH application style. Cache availability does not prove the publisher is trustworthy, and forwarding does not prove every subscriber received the event.
Public or permissioned
Public events can be readable by anyone. Permissioned broadcasts need audience membership, key rotation and removal rules. Retention differs too: a live-only update, an expiring ciphertext and a lasting public milestone make different promises.
Still to decide
Research needs to settle fan-out strategy, offline delivery, moderation, replay protection, content availability, cache eviction and how publishers correct or supersede an earlier milestone.
Research target: no broadcast network, public feed, CDN or delivery guarantee is live.