# Morpheus — Web of Trust

## Core Concept

The Morpheus relay only accepts events from pubkeys that are followed by
at least **N** existing members on the relay. This uses the follow graph
that already exists in Nostr (NIP-02 contact lists) — no custom NIPs,
no invite tokens, no special vouch events.

## How It Works

1. User A publishes a NIP-02 contact list that includes User B's pubkey
2. The relay counts how many existing members follow User B
3. If the count reaches the threshold (e.g., 3), the relay starts
   accepting events from User B
4. If User B's follower count drops below the threshold (unfollows),
   the relay stops accepting new events from them

```text
Relay receives event from pubkey X
  → Count NIP-02 contact lists on this relay that include X
  → If count >= N: accept event
  → If count < N: reject with auth-required or closed message
```

## Why This Works

- **Spam dies naturally** — bots cannot accumulate real follows from
  established members, so they never reach the threshold
- **No moderation overhead** — the follow graph is the moderation layer;
  no admin has to manually approve or ban users
- **Community stays coherent** — the seed community is Russian-speaking,
  and follows propagate through real social ties, so the network stays
  culturally and linguistically coherent without explicit language filters
- **Irrelevant noise disappears** — the relay only serves events from
  the member set, so random global Nostr traffic never enters the feed
- **Zero custom protocol** — uses only NIP-01 (events) and NIP-02
  (contact lists), which every Nostr client already supports
- **Decentralized trust** — no single gatekeeper; trust is distributed
  across the follow graph

## Threshold Tuning

| N | Effect |
| --- | --- |
| 1 | Minimal gate — one follow from any member lets you in. Easy growth, weak spam protection. |
| 3 | Balanced — requires a small social cluster. Good for early growth phase. |
| 5+ | Tight community — harder to get in, strong spam resistance. Good for mature network. |

The threshold can be dynamic — lower during early growth, raised as the
network matures. It can also differ per event kind (e.g., posting
requires 3 follows, but DMs only require 1).

## Edge Cases

- **Bootstrap problem** — the first N users must be manually allowlisted
  (seed set). This is the founding community.
- **Lurkers** — users who read but don't post still need follows to
  interact. Read access can optionally be open.
- **Cross-relay** — users can still connect to public relays alongside
  the Morpheus relay. The WoT gate only applies to the Morpheus relay
  feed.
- **Sybil resistance** — creating fake accounts to follow yourself is
  possible but costly at scale (each fake needs N real followers itself).
  The recursion makes sybil attacks exponentially harder.
- **Follower loss** — if someone unfollows you and your count drops
  below N, your existing events stay on the relay, but new events are
  rejected until count recovers.

## Implementation Notes

- The relay maintains a materialized view of the follow graph (NIP-02
  kind:3 events)
- On each incoming event, it checks the author's inbound follow count
  against the threshold
- The count updates in real-time as NIP-02 contact lists are published
- The seed set (manually allowlisted pubkeys) is configured at relay
  startup