Nostr Relay on an Anubiz Iceland VPS
Iceland for a Nostr relay is the right pick when the relay carries journalist or activist content and you want statutory press-freedom protection at the hosting layer. The relay protocol itself is censorship-neutral; the legal weight comes from where the operator runs. An Icelandic relay is harder to compel into selective content removal than a US, UK, or German relay. The trade-off is cost - Iceland is not the cheap jurisdiction in our lineup.
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Why Iceland for Relay Hosting
IMMI-era statutory framework, slow takedown courts, submarine cable diversity. The first matters for legal posture; the third matters for relay reachability across the Atlantic. North American Nostr users reach a Reykjavik relay with 60-65 ms RTT, which is fine for WebSocket workloads.
Hardware Profile
Iceland VPS III ($74.99/mo): 8 GB RAM, NVMe, 1 Gbit symmetric. Handles 20-30k concurrent subscribers in strfry. The V tier doubles RAM and pushes the ceiling to 50-60k.
Strfry Configuration Notes
Set maxClientMessageSize high enough to handle long-form events (NIP-23). Tune readWriteSeparation if you serve a global subscriber base. Enable publish plugin for spam/CSAM filtering on the way in.
Federation Note
You moderate. We do not. CSAM is the line we enforce at the infrastructure layer on credible notice. Everything else is your call within Icelandic law.
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