The centralized hub replication servers would have to basically foot a huge bill for the fediverse, and do so silently and invisibly to the end user.

One consideration, since they are only having to basically sub/pub - the load actually might be drastically lower than expected.

Furthermore the topology you propose is essentially what we already have. A few large instances hold most of the largest communities. I don’t see that changing.

Suppose- that is a valid point. The issue though- those large instances are unable to keep up with demand and load, causing lots of federation issues.

Perhaps, my idea actually wouldn't help that at all, but, using lemmy.ml as an example-

Instead of it having to send all of its updates out to every server subscribed- it can delegate that to a hub server to do it. The hub server can run a very minimal set of instructions, with enough intelligence to handle sub/pub.

Perhaps- one idea is, instead of thinking of it as a hub-server, think of it as a proxy server. Being able to delegate your instances actions to the proxy server to reduce that load from the main server.

And, instead of the hubs/proxies being more centralized, perhaps, its just an optional thing which you CAN do.

My line of thinking, is methods to reduce load from the main servers. This might be an idea that only benefits the handful of big servers.

To also further clarify- I DONT have a solution to the problem. I am only intending to establish a forum to discuss if this is even a viable option, or perhaps, think of other ways to spread around the load.