tl;dr: Cut out Cloudfare’s recursive resolver (or anyone else’s) and run your own via PiHole and Unbound.
You don’t cut the middle man, you create the middle man with Unbound.
Umm, Unbound is on your machine. So you’re saying you are your own middle man lol…which is the same as cutting out the middle man as you (rather, your server) are you.
And Unbound needs to ask other DNS servers on the internet to resolve DNS queries.
It asks the authoritative nameservers, which is who external DNS servers ask. By using Unbound, you are cutting out those external DNS servers, because you/Unbound is the DNS server. You are asking the authoritative name server directly instead of inserting someone else to ask on your behalf.
Here’s an explanation by Cloudflare: A recursive resolver (also known as a DNS recursor) is the first stop in a DNS query. The recursive resolver acts as a middleman between a client and a DNS nameserver…Most Internet users use a recursive resolver provided by their ISP, but there are other options available; for example Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1.
I copy/pasted the above quote from the article you linked. Again, Unbound (your machine) is asking the DNS nameserver. You’re saying you are your own middleman lol. I’m saying cut out Cloudfare’s recursive resolver and run your own via PiHole and Unbound. Did you read the article I linked?