diff --git a/commons/src/commonMain/kotlin/com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/commons/relays/EOSERelayList.kt b/commons/src/commonMain/kotlin/com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/commons/relays/EOSERelayList.kt
index dc831f3db6..ca22c91182 100644
--- a/commons/src/commonMain/kotlin/com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/commons/relays/EOSERelayList.kt
+++ b/commons/src/commonMain/kotlin/com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/commons/relays/EOSERelayList.kt
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ package com.vitorpamplona.amethyst.commons.relays
 import com.vitorpamplona.amethyst.commons.util.KmpLock
 import com.vitorpamplona.amethyst.commons.util.withLock
 import com.vitorpamplona.quartz.nip01Core.relay.normalizer.NormalizedRelayUrl
+import kotlin.concurrent.Volatile
 
 typealias SincePerRelayMap = MutableMap<NormalizedRelayUrl, MutableTime>
 
@@ -30,29 +31,51 @@ typealias SincePerRelayMap = MutableMap<NormalizedRelayUrl, MutableTime>
  * Tracks EOSE (End Of Stored Events) timestamps for relay subscriptions.
  * Used by UserCardsCache and similar classes to manage relay subscription state.
  */
-class EOSERelayList {
-    var relayList: SincePerRelayMap = mutableMapOf()
 
+class EOSERelayList {
     /**
-     * Writers are serialized because they are not all on one thread: [addOrUpdate] runs on each
-     * relay's own socket-reader thread as EOSE frames land, so a client holding a few hundred relays
-     * has that many potential writers to one plain map. [EOSEAccountFast] wraps its lists in a lock
-     * for the same reason; a bare list handed to [SingleSubEoseManager] had none.
+     * Copy-on-write: replaced wholesale under [lock], never mutated in place after publication, so
+     * readers need no synchronization at all.
      *
-     * Reads still go through the map returned by [since] — deliberately live rather than a snapshot,
-     * since callers clear a relay and then re-read it inside one assembly pass.
+     * The access pattern makes this nearly free. [addOrUpdate] runs on **every live event** — hundreds
+     * per second across a few hundred relays — but an event from a relay already in the map only bumps
+     * the `Long` inside its own [MutableTime]. The map itself is only ever written on the *first* frame
+     * from a relay, plus [remove] and [clear]: a couple of hundred writes for the lifetime of the
+     * process. Locking the common path would have put every one of those events through one monitor
+     * for no structural change at all.
      */
+    @Volatile
+    var relayList: SincePerRelayMap = mutableMapOf()
+        private set
+
+    /** Guards the rare structural writes only. Readers and the per-event bump never take it. */
     private val lock = KmpLock()
 
     fun addOrUpdate(
         relayUrl: NormalizedRelayUrl,
         time: Long,
-    ) = lock.withLock {
-        val eose = relayList[relayUrl]
-        if (eose == null) {
-            relayList[relayUrl] = MutableTime(time)
-        } else {
-            eose.updateIfNewer(time)
+    ) {
+        // Hot path: the relay is already known, so nothing about the map changes.
+        //
+        // The bump itself is unsynchronized. Two socket threads racing it can leave the older of two
+        // timestamps, because `updateIfNewer` reads-compares-writes without a lock — which is harmless
+        // here: this value is a floor for `since`, so losing a millisecond re-asks for a couple of
+        // events rather than skipping any.
+        val existing = relayList[relayUrl]
+        if (existing != null) {
+            existing.updateIfNewer(time)
+            return
+        }
+
+        // Rare: first frame from this relay. Re-check inside the lock, since another thread may have
+        // inserted it between the read above and here.
+        lock.withLock {
+            val current = relayList[relayUrl]
+            if (current != null) {
+                current.updateIfNewer(time)
+            } else {
+                relayList = relayList.toMutableMap().apply { put(relayUrl, MutableTime(time)) }
+            }
         }
     }
 
@@ -70,7 +93,9 @@ class EOSERelayList {
      */
     fun remove(relayUrl: NormalizedRelayUrl) =
         lock.withLock {
-            relayList.remove(relayUrl)
+            if (relayList.containsKey(relayUrl)) {
+                relayList = relayList.toMutableMap().apply { remove(relayUrl) }
+            }
         }
 
     fun since() = relayList