I've been using Relay for maybe 10 years? It's a bit of an underdog and doesn't get spoken about a lot, but over the years I've tried a bunch of Reddit apps and Relay is the one I liked the most.
It used to be called "Reddit News" until Reddit cracked down on apps using "Reddit" in their name. Their rules changed to only allow "for Reddit" at the end of the name, so Reddit News became "Relay for Reddit", rif (Reddit is Fun) became "rif is fun for Reddit", etc.
I'm the same. Relay is so slick and I'm gutted about what is happening. Even if the dev manages to keep Relay going, I don't want to support a company like Reddit who seem happy to shit all over their userbase in pursuit of profit.
That's the exact same boat I'm in right now. I've been a big fan of Relay for years and I think it's great that the developer will probably be able to keep the app going with a small monthly fee. I would even be willing to pay a small monthly fee, but I don't want to support Reddit anymore. I haven't pulled it up since the protest started.
It used to be Relay for me as well. Other apps had neat features I wish Relay had gotten as well, but I couldn't get away from its neat UI and UX even though I tried pretty much every third-party reddit app there was.
I'm certainly sad to leave a handful of my favorite communities behind but Reddit overall can burn down for all I care. Even before the API BS and Huffmann lying through his teeth the Reddit experience had gotten more and more annoying aside from the coziest of subreddits.
Time to move on and perhaps some of the app devs try their hand at a sleek threadiverse app with all of the QoL goodies.