Stacker News FAQ

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New Stackers Start Here

What is Stacker News?
Stacker News is a forum (like Reddit or Hacker News) where you can earn sats for creating or curating content. Rather than collecting “upvotes” that are not redeemable or transferable on Reddit or Hacker News, on Stacker News you can earn sats.
What Are Sats?
Sats are the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. Just like there are 100 pennies in 1 dollar, there are 100,000,000 sats in 1 Bitcoin. On Stacker News, all Bitcoin payments and balances are denominated in sats.
Do I Need Bitcoin to Use Stacker News?
No. Every new stacker can comment for free (with limited visibility) while they earn their first few sats. After a stacker has started earning sats for their content, subsequent posts and comments will incur a small fee to prevent spam and to encourage quality contributions. Many stackers earn enough sats from their posts and comments to continue posting on the site indefinitely without ever depositing their own sats.
Post and comment fees vary depending on the territory.
Why Is My Wallet Balance Going Up?
When other stackers zap your posts and comments, those sats go to you. Stackers who are actively contributing content and sats also earn extra sats as a daily reward. These sats come from the revenue generated by Stacker News from posting/commenting fees and boost fees.

Creating an Account

How Do I Create a Stacker News Account?
The most private way to create a Stacker News account is by logging in with one of the Lightning wallets listed below.
Lightning wallets for logging in to Stacker News:
  • Alby
  • Balance of Satoshis
  • Blixt
  • Breez
  • Coinos
  • LNbits
  • LNtxbot
  • Phoenix
  • SeedAuth
  • SeedAuthExtension
  • SimpleBitcoinWallet
  • ThunderHub
  • Zap Desktop
  • Zeus
Alternatively, new stackers can set up an account by linking their email, Nostr, Github, or X accounts.
How Do I Login With Lightning?
To login with Lightning:
  1. Click Login
  2. Select Login with Lightning
  3. Open one of the Lightning wallets listed above
  4. Scan the QR code that appears on Stacker News
  5. Confirm your log in attempt on your Lightning wallet
Can I Use Multiple Login Methods?
Yes.
Once you’re logged in, follow these steps to link other authentication methods:
  1. Click your username
  2. Click settings
  3. Scroll down to link other authentication methods
Once you’ve linked another authentication method to your account, you’ll be able to access your account on any device using any one of your linked authentication methods.
Why Should I Log In With Lightning?
Logging in with Lightning is the most private method of logging in to Stacker News.
Rather than entering an email address, or linking your X or Github accounts, you can simply scan a QR code with your Lightning wallet or use a Lightning web wallet like Alby which enables desktop stackers to log in with a single click.
How Do I Set a Stacker News Username?
When setting up an account, Stacker News will automatically create a username for you.
To change your username:
  1. Click your username (it's in the top-right corner of your screen)
  2. Select profile
  3. Click ‘edit nym’

Funding Your Account

How Do I Fund My Stacker News Wallet?
There are three ways to fund your Stacker News account:
  1. By QR code
  2. By Lightning Address
  3. By sharing great content
QR code
  1. Click your username
  2. Click wallet
  3. Click fund
  4. Enter a payment amount
  5. Generate an invoice on Stacker News
  6. Pay the invoice on your Lightning wallet
Lightning Address
  1. Click your username
  2. Open a wallet that offers Lightning Address support
  3. Enter your Stacker News Lightning Address on your wallet
  4. Pay any amount to fund your Stacker News account
Sharing great content
Every new stacker gets free comments (with limited visibility) to get started on Stacker News. Many stackers have earned enough sats from their first few posts and comments to continue posting on the site indefinitely without ever depositing their own sats.
What Is a Lightning Address?
A Lightning Address is just like an email address, but for your Bitcoin.
It is a simple tool that anyone can use to send Bitcoin without scanning QR codes or copying and pasting invoices between wallets.
For more on how Lightning Addresses work, click here.
Where Is My Stacker News Lightning Address?
All stackers get Lightning addresses, which follow the format of username@stacker.news.
Your Lightning address can also be found on your profile page, highlighted with a yellow button and a Lightning bolt icon.
How Do I See My Account Balance?
When logged in, your wallet balance is the number shown in the top-right corner of your screen.
Clicking your wallet balance allows you to fund, withdraw, or view your past transactions.
How Do I See My Transaction History?
To see your full history of Stacker News transactions:
  1. Click your wallet balance in the top-right corner of your screen
  2. Click Wallet History
  3. Select which data you would like to see from the top menu
The buttons on your wallet history page allow you to view and filter your past funding invoices, withdrawals, as well as the transactions where you stacked sats or spent sats on Stacker News.

Posting on Stacker News

How Do I Post?
To submit a post, click the Post button in the nav bar.
Each post has a small fixed fee as a measure to limit spam, and to encourage stackers to post quality content.
There are a few different types of posts stackers can make on Stacker News, including links, discussions, polls, and bounties.
  • Link posts require a title and a URL (stackers can optionally include a discussion prompt)
  • Discussion posts require a title and a discussion prompt (stackers can optionally add links to their discussion prompt)
  • Poll posts require a title and at least two poll options to choose from
  • Bounty posts require a title, prompt, and a bounty amount to be paid on task completion
How Do I Comment?
To comment on a post:
  1. Click the title of the post you want to comment on
  2. Submit your comment in the text box below the post
To reply to a comment:
  1. Click reply beneath the comment you want to reply to
  2. Submit your comment in the text box below the comment
How Do Posting Fees Work?
Post and comment fees vary depending on a few factors.
First, territory owners have the ability to set their own post and comment fees.
Additionally, fees increase by 10x for repetitive posts and self-reply comments to prevent spam.
As an example, if it costs 10 sats for a stacker to make a post in a territory, it will cost 100 sats if they make a second post within 10 minutes of their first post. If they post a third time within 10 minutes of their first one, it will cost 1,000 sats.
This 10x fee escalation continues until 10 minutes have elapsed, and will reset to a fee of 10 sats when the stacker goes 10 minutes or more without posting or replying to themselves in a comment thread.
This 10 minute fee escalation rule does not apply to stackers who are replying to other stackers, only those who repetitively post or reply to themselves within a single thread.
There are also fees for uploads but your first 250 MB within 24 hours are free. After that, every upload will cost 10 sats until you reach 500 MB. Then the fee is raised to 100 sats until 1 GB after which every upload will cost 1,000 sats. After 24 hours, you can upload 250 MB for free again. Uploads without being logged in always cost 100 sats.
Upload fees are applied when you submit your post or comment. Uploaded content that isn't used within 24 hours in a post or comment is deleted.
What Is a Boost?
Boosts allow stackers to increase the ranking of their post upon creation to give their content more visibility.
How Do I Earn Sats on Stacker News?
Stackers reward each other for their contributions by zapping them with sats.
To start earning sats, you can share interesting links, discussion prompts, or comments with the community.
Beyond the direct payments from other stackers, Stacker News also uses the revenue it generates from its job board, boost fees, post fees, and stacker donations to reward stackers that contributed to the site with even more sats.
Every day, Stacker News rewards either creators or zappers with a daily reward. These rewards go to stackers who either created or zapped one or more of the top 33% of posts and comments from the previous day. The rewards scale with the ranking of the content as determined by other stackers.
Finally, Stacker News also rewards stackers with sats for referring new stackers to the platform. To read more about the Stacker News referral program, click here.
How Do I Format Posts on Stacker News?
Stacker News uses github flavored markdown for styling all posts and comments.
You can use any of the following elements in your content:
  • Headings
  • Blockquotes
  • Unordered Lists
  • Ordered Lists
  • Inline code with syntax highlighting
  • Tables
  • Text Links
  • Line Breaks
  • Subscript or Superscript
In addition, stackers can tag other stackers with the @ symbol like this: @sn. Stackers can also refer to different territories with the ~ symbol like this: ~jobs.
How Do I Post Images or Videos on Stacker News?
There are two ways to post images or videos:
  1. By pasting a URL to an image or video
  2. By uploading an image or video
If you have a URL, you can simply paste it into any textbox. Once your link is pasted into the textbox of a post or comment, it will automatically be rendered as an image or video when you preview or post.
To upload files, click the upload icon on the top-right corner of the textbox. This will open a file explorer where you can select the files you want to upload (or multiple). We currently support following file types:
  • image/gif
  • image/heic
  • image/png
  • image/jpeg
  • image/webp
  • video/mp4
  • video/mpeg
  • video/webm
Uploaded content that isn't used within 24 hours in a SN post or comment is deleted.
As explained in the section about posting fees, fees might apply for uploads.
To expand an image on Stacker News, click the image. Clicking it again will shrink it back to its original size.
If you are trying to post images from Twitter on Stacker News, make sure you have selected the tweet's image URL, and not the tweet URL itself.
To find the image URL of a twitter photo, right-click the image on Twitter, select "Open In New Tab", and copy that URL.
Stacker News Shortcuts
Stacker News supports a handful of useful keyboard shortcuts for saving time when creating content:
ctrl+enter: submit any post/comment/form ctrl+k: link in markdown fields ctrl+i: italics in markdown fields ctrl+b: bold in markdown fields ctrl+alt+tab: real tab in markdown fields

Stacker News Territories

What are Territories?
Territories are communities on Stacker News. Each territory has an owner who acts as a steward of the community, and anyone can post content to the territory that best fits the topic of their post.
When Stacker News first launched, much of the discussion focused exclusively on Bitcoin. However, the launch of territories means anyone can now create a thriving community on Stacker News to discuss any topic.
Can Anyone Start a Territory?
Anyone can start a territory by clicking the dropdown menu next to the logo on the homepage, scrolling to the bottom of the list, and clicking create. Stackers can also create as many territories as they want.
How Much Does It Cost to Start a Territory?
Starting a territory costs either 100k sats/month, 1m sats/year, or 3m sats as a one-time payment.
If a territory owners chooses either the monthly or yearly payment options, they can select 'auto-renew' so that Stacker News is automatically paid the territory fee each month or year. If a territory owner doesn't select 'auto-renew', they will get a notification to pay an invoice within 5 days after the end of their month or year to keep their territory.
If you later change your mind, your payment for the current period is included in the new cost. This means that if you go from monthly to yearly payments for example, we will charge you 900k instead of 1m sats.
Can Territory Owners Earn Sats?
Yes, territory owners earn 70% of all fees generated by content in their specific territory. This means territory owners earn 7% of all sats zapped within their territory, as well as 70% of all sats paid as boosts or posting and commenting costs within their territory. These rewards are paid to territory owners each day as part of the Stacker News daily rewards.
The remaining 30% of fees generated by content in a given territory is paid to the Stacker News daily rewards pool, which rewards the best contributors on the site each day.
What Variables Do Territory Owners Control?
Territory owners can set the following variables for their territory:
  • Territory name
  • Territory description
  • Minimum posting cost
  • Allowable post types
Territory owners can also mark their territory as NSFW or enable moderation. Moderation allows them to outlaw content with one click (see How Do I Flag Content).
All territory variables can be updated after creation.
What Happens If I No Longer Want My Territory?
If a territory owner chooses not to renew their territory at the end of their billing period, the territory will be archived. Stackers can still see archived posts and comments, but they will not be able to create new posts or comments until someone takes ownership of the territory.

Discovering Content on Stacker News

How Do I Search on Stacker News?
To search for content on Stacker News, click the magnifying glass located in the navbar. This is a powerful feature that allows stackers to search for posts, comments, and other stackers across the site.
Search results can be filtered by the following metrics:
  • best match
  • most recent
  • most comments
  • most sats
  • most votes
In addition, search results can be segmented over time, showing the relevant results from the past day, week, month, year, or forever.
Finally, there are some hidden search commands that can further assist you with identifying specific types of content on Stacker News:
~territoryname allows you to search within a specific territory nym:ausersnym allows you to search for items from a certain user by replacing ausernym with the nym you want to find url:aurl allows you to search for certain domain names by replacing aurl with a domain name you want to find
How Do I Subscribe to Someone on Stacker News?
If you find a stacker you want to see more content from, you can click their profile and then click the ... icon next to their photo. There, you can choose to either subscribe to their posts or their comments.
Once subscribed, you'll get a notification each time they post content.
How Do I Subscribe to Posts on Stacker News?
If you find a post you want to follow along with, click the ... icon next to the post metadata and select subscribe.
Once subscribed, you'll get a notification each time someone makes a comment on that post.
How Do I Mute on Stacker News?
If you want to mute a stacker, click the ... icon next to one of their posts or the ... icon on their profile page and select mute.
Once muted, you'll no longer see that stacker's content or get notified if they comment on your content.
How Do I Find New Territories on Stacker News?
Stacker News offers a number of territories, or topic-based collections of content.
To explore a particular territory on Stacker News, click the dropdown menu next to the Stacker News logo in the navbar and select the topic you'd like to see content on.
If you want to post content to a particular territory, the territory you're currently browsing will automatically be selected as the territory for your post.
If you wish to post your content in a different territory, simply select a new one from the dropdown on the post page and fill out your post details there.

Zapping on Stacker News

How Do I Zap on Stacker News?
To send a zap, click the Lightning bolt next to a post or comment. Each click will automatically send your default zap amount to the creator of the post or comment. You can zap a post or comment an unlimited number of times.
You can also zap any specific number of sats by either changing your default zap amount or by setting a custom zap amount on an individual piece of content.
How Do I Change My Default Zap Amount?
You can change your default zap amount in your settings:
  1. Click your username
  2. Click settings
  3. Enter a new default zap amount
How Do I Zap a Custom Amount?
To send a custom zap amount, long-press on the Lightning bolt next to a post or comment until a textbox appears. Then type the number of sats you’d like to zap, and click zap.
Turbo Zaps
Turbo Zaps is an opt-in, experimental feature for improving zapping UX. When enabled in your settings, every Lightning bolt click on a specific post or comment raises your total zap to the next 10x of your default zap amount. If your default zap amount is 1 sat:
  • your first click: 1 sat total zapped
  • your second click: 10 sats total zapped
  • your third click: 100 sats total zapped
  • your fourth click: 1000 sats total zapped
  • and so on...
Turbo zaps only escalate your zapping amount when you repeatedly click on the Lightning bolt of a specific post or comment. Zapping a new post or comment will once again start at your default zap amount, and escalate by 10x with every additional click.
Turbo zaps is a convenient way to modify your zap amounts on the go, rather than relying on a single default amount or a long-press of the Lightning bolt for all your zapping.
Do Zaps Help Content Rank Higher?
Yes. The ranking of an item is affected by:
  • the amount a stacker zaps a post or comment
  • the trust of the stacker making the zap
  • the time elapsed since the creation of the item
Zapping an item with more sats amplifies your trust, giving you more influence on an item's ranking. However, the relationship between sats contributed and a stacker's influence on item ranking is not linear, it's logarithmic.
The effect a stacker's zap has on an item's ranking is trust*log10(total zap amount) where 10 sats = 1 vote, 100 sats = 2, 1000 sats = 3, and so on ... all values in between are valid as well.
To make this feature sybil resistant, SN takes 30% of zaps and re-distributes them to territory founders and the SN community as part of the daily rewards.
Why Should I Zap Posts on Stacker News?
There are a few reasons to zap posts on Stacker News:
  1. To influence the ranking of content on the site
Every post and comment is ranked based on the number of people who zapped it and the trust level of each zapping stacker. More zaps from more trusted stackers means more people will see a particular piece of content.
  1. To acknowledge the value of the content other people create (value for value)
Sending someone a like or an upvote incurs no cost to you, and therefore these metrics can easily be gamed by bots. Sending someone sats incurs a direct cost to you, which gives the recipient a meaningful reward and acts as a clear signal that you found a particular piece of content to be valuable.
  1. To earn trust for identifying good content
On Stacker News, new stackers start with zero trust and either earn trust by zapping good content or lose trust by zapping bad content.
Can I Donate Sats to Stacker News?
Yes. Every day, Stacker News distributes the revenue it collects from job listings, posting fees, boosts, and donations back to the stackers who made the best contributions on a given day.
To donate sats directly to the Stacker News rewards pool, or to view the rewards that will be distributed to stackers tomorrow, click here.

Job Board

How Do I Post a Job on Stacker News?
To post a job on Stacker News:
  1. Navigate to the ~jobs territory
  2. Click post
Fill out all the details of your job listing, including:
  • Job title
  • Company name
  • Location
  • Description
  • Application URL or email
If you wish to promote your job, you can also set a budget for your job listing.
All promoted jobs are paid for on a sats per minute basis, though you can also see an expected monthly USD price when you set your budget.
Your budget determines how highly your job listing will rank against other promoted jobs on the Stacker News job board.
If you want to get more people viewing your job, consider raising your budget above the rate that other employers are paying for their listings.
If you choose not to promote your job, your listing will be shown in reverse-chronological order, and will be pushed down the job board as new listings appear on Stacker News.
How Are Job Listings Ranked on Stacker News?
Each job is listed in reverse-chronological order on Stacker News, with an option for employers to pay a promotion fee to maintain the ranking of their job listing over time.
For employers who choose to promote their jobs, the fee amount determines the ranking of a job. The more an employer is willing to pay to advertise their job, the higher their listing will rank.
If two jobs have identical fees, the first job that was posted will rank higher than the more recent one.
Where Do Job Posting Fees Go?
Stacker News earns revenue from job posting fees, as well as boosts, post and comment fees, and a fee on all zaps on the platform. All of that revenue is then paid back to stackers as daily rewards.
The sats from the daily rewards go to the stackers who contribute posts and comments each day.

Ranking & Influence on Stacker News

What Does The Lightning Bolt Button Do?
The lightning bolt button next to each post and comment is a tool for stackers to signal that they like what they see.
The big difference between the Stacker News lightning bolt and the "like" or "upvote" buttons you might find on other sites is that when you press the lightning bolt you're not only raising the ranking of that content, you're also zapping the stacker who created the content with your sats.
  • A grey lightning bolt icon means you haven't zapped the post or comment yet
  • A colored lightning bolt icon means you have zapped the post or comment (the color changes depending on how much you zap, and you can zap as many times as you like)
  • If there is no lightning bolt next to a post or comment it means you created the content, and therefore can't zap it
How Does Stacker News Rank Content?
Stacker News uses sats alongside a Web of Trust to rank content and deter Sybil attacks.
As explained here, stackers can send zaps to each other by clicking the lightning bolt next to a post or comment. The zap amounts are one factor that helps determine which content ranks highest on the site, and are weighted by how much the stacker sending the zap is trusted.
The Stacker News ranking algorithm works as follows:
  • The number of stackers who have zapped an item
  • Multiplied by the product of the trust score of each stacker and the log value of sats zapped
  • Divided by a power of the time since a story was submitted
  • Plus the boost divided by a larger power (relative to un-boosted ranking) of the time since a story was submitted
The comments made within a post are ranked the same way as top-level Stacker News posts.
How Does The Stacker News Web of Trust Work?
Each stacker has a trust score on Stacker News. New accounts start without any trust, and over time stackers can earn trust by zapping good content, and lose trust by zapping bad content.
The only consideration that factors into a stacker’s trust level is whether or not they are zapping good content. The zap amount does not impact a stacker's trust.
In addition, stackers do not lose or gain trust for making posts or comments. Instead, the post and comment fees are the mechanism that incentivizes stackers to only make high quality posts and comments.
A stacker’s trust is an important factor in determining how much influence their zaps have on the ranking of content, and how much they earn from the daily sat reward pool paid to zappers as explained here.
How Do I Flag Content I Don't Like?
If you see content you don't like, you can click the ... next to the post or comment to flag it. This is a form of negative feedback that helps Stacker News decide which content should be visible on the site.
It costs 1 sat to flag content, and doing so doesn't affect your trust or the trust of the stacker who posted the content. Instead, it simply lowers the visibility of the specific item for all stackers on Tenderfoot mode.
If an item gets flagged by stackers with enough combined trust, it is outlawed and hidden from view for stackers on Tenderfoot mode. If you wish to see this flagged content without any modifications, you can enable Wild West mode in your settings.
What is Tenderfoot Mode?
Tenderfoot mode hides or lowers the visibility of flagged content on Stacker News. This is the default setting for all stackers.
What is Wild West Mode?
Wild West mode allows you to see all content on Stacker News, including content that has been flagged by stackers.
This unfiltered view doesn't modify the visibility of items on Stacker News based on negative feedback from stackers.
You can enable Wild West mode in your settings panel.
What is sats filter?
Sats filter allows you to choose how many sats have been "invested" in a post or content for you to see it. "Invested" sats are the sum of posting costs, zapped sats, and boost.
If you'd like to see all content regardless of investment, set your sats filter to 0.

Notification Settings

Where Are My Stacker News Notifications?
To see your notifications, click the bell icon in the top-right corner of the screen. A red dot next to the bell icon indicates a new notification.
To change your notification settings:
  1. Click your username
  2. Click settings
  3. Update your preferences from the ‘Notify me when…’ section
How Do I Create A Bio on Stacker News?
To fill out your bio:
  1. Click your username
  2. Click profile
  3. Click edit bio
How Do I View My Past Stacker News Transactions?
To view your transaction history:
  1. Click your wallet balance next to your username
  2. Click wallet history

Other FAQs

How Does The Stacker News Referral Program Work?
For every new stacker you refer, you'll receive:
  • 2.1% of all the sats they earn for their content
  • 21% of all the sats they spend on boosts or job listings
Any Stacker News link can be turned into a referral link by appending /r/<your nym>, e.g. /r/k00b to the link. This means you can earn sats for sharing Stacker News links on any website, newsletter, video, social media post, or podcast.
Some examples of referral links using @k00b as an example include:
https://stacker.news/r/k00b https://stacker.news/items/109473/r/k00b https://stacker.news/top/posts/r/k00b?when=week
To make referring stackers easy, every post also has a link sharing button in the upper right corner. If you are logged in, copying the link will automatically add your referral code to it.
For logged in stackers, there is a dashboard to track your referrals and how much you're earning from them. It's available in the dropdown in the navbar.
The money paid out to those who refer new stackers comes out of SN's revenue. The referee doesn't pay anything extra, the referrer just gets extra sats as a reward from SN.
Where Should I Submit Feature Requests?
Ideally on the git repo https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues. The more background you give on your feature request the better. The hardest part of developing a feature is understanding the problem it solves, all the things that can wrong, etc.
Will Stacker News Pay For Contributions?
Yes, we pay sats for PRs. Sats will be proportional to the impact of the PR. If there's something you'd like to work on, suggest how much you'd do it for on the issue. If there's something you'd like to work on that isn't already an issue, whether its a bug fix or a new feature, create one.
Where Should I Submit Bug Reports?
Bug reports can be submitted on our git repo: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues.
Responsible Disclosure
If you find a vulnerability on Stacker News, we would greatly appreciate it if you contact us via hello@stacker.news or t.me/k00bideh.
Where Can I Ask More Questions?
Reply to this FAQ. It's like any other post on the site.
Hello all. Very excited to find this site after all the crap that went down on Reddit this year. I tried Lemmy but found the communities more insufferable than Reddit.
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I found Lemmy that way too. Also, a lot of talking about how to run the community instead of just running the community. I get that they were trying to figure everything out, but it was just a lot of nonsense right after the Reddit implosion. Haven't checked in on Lemmy since though.
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Hi. I'm new to posting here. Just recently got active with Lightning Network and actively involved in Bitcoin Adoption. Ironically through NOSTR becoming more popular and riding the wave of the various relays and services built on top of it and monetised by Zaps over the LN.
Keen to be more present here on SN, I've earned my first 100 sats for posting a link to my website. I'm looking forward to much more sharing and learning.
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I am very happy that there is a place where you can discuss about any subject and also benefit from your words if it is of interest to someone else. I thank the creators of this site, very good idea.
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Noob question. I logged in “anonymously” with Breez. What is my credential? A lnurl address? Is my account transferable to another wallet?
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I signed up using Breeze, and no problem, the way I used was to copy the address under the QR Stacker News code, and open Breeze, automatically stacker news connected. On the Stacker News page, the breeze address will appear at the top right, click on the address, select Change the Profile Name. It's easy.
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Your credential is your lightning key pair. If you restore another wallet from the same seed, your credentials can follow you to any wallet.
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Bummer. Tried Muun and Wallet of Satoshi and finally d/led Breez because it has lnurl support (unnecessarily?) I don’t even have sats in it, but it logged me in and apparently there’s no way to access private keys in Breez. hrmph.
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I'm surprised Breez doesn't have you backup your seed. I could've swore I had to.
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Where is the territory reward model explained?
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will add to the FAQ, for now it's here
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Could you please explain to me in lamens terms what is happening when I create an account with my lightning wallet? My mind was blow. It seems feasible that one day we will be able to cross login to different platforms this exact way. I have little understanding though of what's going on under the hood and i'm so curious!
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Basically
  1. Your wallet takes your node keypair + the domain name (stacker.news) = keypair unique to stacker news
  2. When you scan the QR code, it sends your wallet a “secret” which is just a big random number
  3. Your wallet takes the secret and cryptographically signs it with the key from (1)
  4. Your wallet sends the signature to SN
These steps happen every time you login, and while the secret will be different each time, your keypair from (1) is the same. So, your keypair is your identity and the signature (3) proves you “own” that identity. If you don’t have the keypair you can’t produce the same signature.
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Excellent. Thank you very much. I will have to read this many times. Bitcoin is mind blowing.
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Can you fork stacker.news?
I have an idea for a similar website for a specific niche subject. I don't think it would take off in a territory or specifically on SN. I am looking at nostr also but not sure it's nostr specific, more a potential bridge into normies knowing about nostr. I would appreciate any information you could direct me toward :)
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Can you fork stacker.news?
We should maybe include in our license that you have to post whatever you're building on SN if you fork? lol, jk of course :)
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thanks for that! after consideration I think it would be best to give it a shot as a nostr client. your code looks complex as hell lol
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This post was featured on This Day in Stacker News.
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Is there a reward for finding a critical bug?
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yes but right, we didn't mention that here:
Responsible Disclosure If you find a vulnerability on Stacker News, we would greatly appreciate it if you contact us via kk@stacker.news or t.me/k00bideh.
we pay for features, we definitely absolutely pay for exploits.
Hey Keyan
Big fan of Stacker.news and your work.
I have a question about how the top posts of the week work.
I wrote this post #219309 and it did pretty well in terms of sats earned, I was of course vainly watching it every day to see how it went and it hit 25K sats which made me very happy.
It seemed to rank on the top posts of the week, but didn't seem to appear on the weekly newsletter despite getting more sats than a few that did. I was greedily anticipating a few more sats if it got featured (don't blame me, perfect hard money will turn anyone into greedy content creators :))
Now I think what happened is I posted it right at the end of the previous week, and by the time it earned the Sats the week had past. Is that what happened?
Just keen to understand how the timing works and if that's why I missed out, very keen to write more posts and earn sats for them.
Thanks from New Zealand (which is on the other side of the dateline which makes is harder to work out your week start and end times.
Would love to come visit in Austin one day. heard some podcasts lately with a few of your shared space crew.
Peace
HG
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Good points about the SN newsletter feature!
I am currently writing a blog post to make ranking, rewards and the trust algorithm beneath more transparent.
I should probably also include how posts end up in the SN newsletter!
/cc @k00b
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This may seem like a sill question but can is this platform going to be used for non btc related topics? I'd love to discuss poker and chess here!
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Eventually. We don't yet have so much traffic that there are enough other people here who want to discuss poker and chess yet.
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Thanks for the sats and speedy reply! It'd be so cool to author a bitcoin/poker blog here in the future--the two go so well together!
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Thank you. I’m excited to start to use Stacker and see how it goes. I appreciate that someone put this together!
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Amazing thank you!
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This is amazing. Bitcoin is finally getting to what we have envisioned for a decade.
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I see in settings there’s an option to hide the cowboy hat next to my name. what’s the point of the cowboy hat in the first place?
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DISCLAIMER: This comment doesn't answer your question. Consider it an experimental comment.
Came across this while re-reading the SN FAQ (trying to make more sense of the reward system).
I'm not surprised that your question hasn't been answered. :) Like me, you've probably also since realized that it won't be answered. Not here, anyway. I've referred to it elsewhere as "an inside joke" when someone else asked what the cowboy hat was all about.
Glad to see I'm not the only one that wondered. With a current streak of 53 you must have figured it out, right?
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I had some posts and history going back 6 months or so. 18 posts, less than 3000 sats. I can see it out there. But I can't login to that account anymore. The email that I used now logs me into a a different account, with zero posts and sats.
What could have happened? Is there any way to recover it?
I just now discovered this page - https://stacker.news/faq#how-do-i-create-a-stacker-news-account. I will be reviewing it carefully, but would still appreciate anyone who can tell me what may have happened. I just used an email, then clicked on the link that was sent to the email, I never set up an account with lightening (though I will do that now)
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I think I remember a similar case where someone lost access to his account only linked via mail and it was resolved. Was that you by chance?
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Maybe you can create a dedicated top link sub only for memes. bust we need a repository to upload the images/short videos Let's have some fun. Bitcoin is backed by memes... And maybe in your weekly podcast make a meme review about best rewarded
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A meme sub. I like it!
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Very interesting concept
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Don't lie, the real most frequently asked question is
"hello friend is there a chance you want that our firm can boost your seo rankings?"
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lol we do occasionally get those emails
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Is there a way to unflag something? I accidentally flagged the wrong comment. Even if it was not possible to undo, it would be nice if I could "undo" by zapping with the same amount of sats I used to flag.
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We agree! We have a github issue up for it
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Where do the sats from the post and comment fee go? I'm thinking it goes towards keep the site alive but I'm not sure.
Is there going to be a donation option or some revenue model in the future?
Thanks for this awesome site!
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The posting/comment fees do go to SN. The revenue model is up in the air - I'm more concerned with making SN a cool place for Bitcoiners to hang out. We just launched ~jobs which should bring in some revenue eventually, but we plan to give a lot of those sats to our best, most active users because if the job board succeeds it'll be because our users made it so.
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Prob a stupid question - what are these blue dots/squares:
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New comments since you last viewed the thread. If you enter the thread new comments have a slight blue outline
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Thanks k00000000000b
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When upvoting 1 sat (or boosting) is that an actual lightning transaction that takes place on the network or is it recorded as a change in the users balance on a ledger hosted by SN?
Just amazing if all upvotes/boosts are taking place in real time on Lightning.
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It’s just SN’s ledger. When we offer noncustodial wallets, it would be on Lightning. Lightning can definitely handle that!
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I like this Platform very much. I came here recently. I will definitely promote this site and bring some refferal here. This is the way to contribute from my side. I will try to post good content here.
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This is a greet project! Especially cause Reddit got banned in my country.
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Especially cause Reddit got banned in my country.
👀
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Thank you for the preciseness and clear instructions on how these platform works, it's an opportunities to all of us to discover something new and also to share some ideas from day to day⚡
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Minor typo in FAQ:
Gitihub
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@kr maintains the FAQ afaik
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How in the world did you see this comment several weeks later? haha
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I looked into the FAQ because of this post
And someone already had this question but it wasn't answered here yet.
Will wait for a good response from @k00b or @kr to the post, then I will copy the response to the FAQ. I don't feel comfortable answering questions so directly related to the business side of SN 😅
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Ah, makes sense!
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fixed
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Hi, I have just discovered this site, it seems nice and I would like to become soon part of this community.
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I, hereby, grant you access. :)
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thanks, what an honor! 😁
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Just joining. Looks really cool. I hope it works well. Thank you so much
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It seems like the profile of the person who referred me isn’t showing that I joined with their referral link. Is there a way to be sure they get their sats?
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Which person? I can verify if they got credit for the referral.
They don't get sats until you begin earning sats, or spending them on boost/jobs.
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What happens when 1 satoshi = $1???
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lol Any day now! But when it's that high, hopefully there will be subs that have different, cheaper unit economics. The database denominates everything in millisatoshis so this aspect is future proof until each bitcoin is about $100 billion.
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Looks like @anon is a system catchall for users that aren't logged in? That and related info might could be in the FAQ if I didn't just miss it (search for anon yielded no results).
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What if I use Twitter auth for my Stacker.News account, and then Twitter suspends my account?
Is there some SN account recovery process, in that instance?
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There isn't yet. We have an issue open to link multiple sign in methods to a single account: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues/73.
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I see the license for the code building the SN website is MIT. Does this mean I could completely fork off the code, and build my own project with it (even going completely away from the SN project, just taking advantage of the website structure so I don't have to start from scratch)?
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Yes it does! Fork away.
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Great! Thanks
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Asking because I never made my own website. Also to take advantage of the core functionalities using the LN and paying with sats. Don't want to leech of @k00b's hard work, so prefer asking before proceeding.
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Can you add here in FAQ how to send tips? I see posts that says "4 sats \ 20 tipped \ 1 comments" So I understand that 4 sats comes from people clicking on "boost" icon and goes to OP wallet, but the tips from where are coming?
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Sure. But to also explain it here: after you upvote, every following upvote is a tip.
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ahhh ok now I get it. So only the first click on boost is like upvote, after that if are from the same user, are tips. Nice.
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Any chance we can change login method but keep our account? (name, posts, comments, balance...) Thanks
Any way to enable the website as an RSS feed?
Are there any plans to add filtering to the interface? There are a few users who I'd prefer to filter by default. It would be nice to just "mute" them or have their comments/posts hidden by default.
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Mutes are out now, you can click on ... next to a post or on the profile of a user and click "mute"
Their replies will then only show up collapsed as reply from someone you muted. You can click to uncollapse.
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I have a withdrawal of 3 sats that with fee shows 4.001 sats. No problem there.
But the wallet balance only shows a whole number, and was reduced by 5 sats after this transaction.
I'm just curious, did this 4.001 spend take 5 sats from my balance, or does my balance still include the 0.999 sats, but the balance just doesn't display it (i.e., truncates any decimal amounts)?
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It truncates it. Internally your balance is in millisats
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Would be cool to be able to see all the posts a user upvoted. Also would be nice to have a bookmark feature.
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My main concern with upvotes is privacy. If I do it I'll probably make it opt-in. Also, I rarely go to someone's twitter profile and see what they're liking.
I agree on bookmarking! Created a GH issue https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues/71
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Apparently I was able to upvote my own post once.
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Yep, when you exhaust your free posts/comments you'll automatically upvote all your own stuff.
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What does it mean those numbers next to the user name? I have like 90 \ 140 I understand that 90 are sats received in my wallet, but 140 what represent?
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The first number is your wallet balance - what you have to spend or withdrawal. The second number is the amount of sats you’ve stacked (or earned) in total on the site.
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How do you boost a post? Went back to my old post and I'm not seeing the option on my end.
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You boost a post like you upvote it. After your first upvote, all your subsequent upvotes are considered boost.
Note: that boost decays pretty fast with time since the original submission. The older the post the more upvotes (and yet even more boost) a post requires to rank higher.
I might change this in the future. Rather than using the time since the original submission I might use the average time of the upvotes and boost rather than the time of the submission.
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Adding a math plugin to my markdown editor is on my todo list ... so I can show rather than tell what the ranking algo is among other things.
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This comment was featured on This Day in Stacker News.
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I was trying to boost this FAQ in hopes that it would show up in the "Front page" (and thus in the /rss fee), so that new posts would automatically occur in the @StackerNewsFeed account on Twitter and also on Mastodon.
Is there a (reasonable) amount of sats that would cause this to happen (for this post from back in July)? Or does the rank algo just make that infeasible?
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Ranking algorithm makes it infeasible.
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Hey. Thanks for the site; cool. The RSS feed is not working as it should, well not with my reader app that is [I'm a Thunderbird user]. Also, I really can't stand 'white pages with black text'. Any chance that you could implement a profile based theme changer? I look forward to seeing how this site grows as I've yet to find a bitcoin community to which I feel that I can belong. Be safe; peace.
Sorry if this question has been answered elsewhere - I noticed there's a 100k sat limit on wallets at the moment, but that makes paying for territories really difficult. Is there an easy way around this? cc @koob @ek
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Wait until you territory payment is due then hit the ‘pay’ button and pay the invoice that pops up
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@k00b will I be able to pay from a bitcoin wallet, or does it have to be lightning? Also, is the territory up for grabs as soon as payment is due, or is there some grace period? (I think I'm due for renewal in a few hours, but I won't be around to pay it until later than that)
Also curious if you'd consider allowing past territory ownership fees to go towards the permanent ownership fee
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Currently, it's lightning only.
You'll have a five day grace period from the moment payment is due. But most territories don't get taken even after being up for grabs.
Territory fees from the current billing period do go toward permanent ownership, e.g. if you're doing monthly, and upgrade to yearly, it'll be 900k.
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thank you sir
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Are we allowed to post Referral links to Coinbase, Amazon, etc, if they are in context of our post?
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Ultimately the stackers decide with their zaps and downzaps. When I see low effort, shameless referral link sharing, I downzap it hard personally.
I'd guess it depends on the post and depends on the context.
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Do territories exist on Nostr?
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Our territories don't if that's what you're asking. But nostr has communities like those on https://satellite.earth/
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Hey @k00b, i'm facing difficulties withdrawing funds from SN. After scanning the QR Code it says: no route try increasing max fee. I setup default max fee for withdrawals from 10 to 1000 sats in account settings. But it still says the same Also the wallet tells me: "stacker.news is taking too long to pay" Do you have an idea? Thanks!
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We might not have a route to your node/wallet.
Which wallet are you withdrawing to? You can message me on telegram t.me/k00bideh if you'd like to not have to discuss in public
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What does bad content mean with regards to trust levels?
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It means other people downzap what you upzap or vice versa. This disagreement sows distrust between you and whomever you disagree with.
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Wait, is there a downzap?
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It’s flag right now but same thing functionally
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Out of curiosity, do you all have a business model yet? I assumed it was the 10% (?) platform fee for posts, jobs, zaps, etc, but the FAQ above says:
All of that revenue is then paid back to stackers as daily rewards.
Do you eventually plan to keep some of it? Or do you have different plans?
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Sorry for the late reply. We are all subscribed to this thread now so things shouldn't go unnoticed now.
Business plan is WIP but by end of year we'll be adding user generated subs and we have some ideas around making sats from that.
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Hmm, I think I've found a simple way that SN's system can be 'gamed' to get sats. I'm not sure if it's that big, or not foreseen by yourselves already.
How could I lay this out to you without the idea being read and used by others?
Could I write it here - but delete it quickly after you've read it?
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I didn't actually put a name out there as I don't read those posts so can't comment - but I always side-eye when I encounter those questions and wonder what's going on...
I had just come up with a hypothetical idea of how the system could be gamed, not by who (or if it was being done so already).
But repeatedly side-eyeing after these weird posts might have inspired me.
We're kinda wired to try to make sense of weird phenomena.
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How can I withdraw my SATS to a wallet that only accepts QR codes? Can you PLEASSE for the love of BTC implement a ways to make a QR code from your LN addresses?
Having a personal page under your profile, that acts like a post to a board would be cool.
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How we can stack sats on profile
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when you create a bio, your bio becomes a post that other users can tip.
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How to check wich wallet you are connected with?
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We could show you your pubkey in your profile (such that only you can see it) but currently, we don't do that. I created a ticket for that: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues/281
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Actually, I forgot how LNURL-auth works, lol
We do not receive the pubkey of your wallet. It's a domain-specific key. So my proposed solution wouldn't work.
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Sometimes, I see hat symbols next to usernames, or more like a cowboy head with a cowboy hat. When I mouse over it, it gives me a day count, like "10 days". What is this?
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No one knows what this cowboy hat is? I don't either.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @sn 8 Apr
top secret feature 🤠
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I guess so
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Please add Wallet of Satoshi to this section: https://stacker.news/faq#how-do-i-create-a-stacker-news-account
I just checked and it also supports lnurl-auth, however as of now it's not obvious. To register with stacker.news with WoS one needs to scan stacker.news qr code with camera in WoS after clicking... SEND button.
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@sn @koob When a reply is marked "freebie", what does that mean?
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it means the post or comment is from a new user who doesn't have a balance of sats in their account yet... once they've earned or deposited sats, their posts and comments cost sats like all the others.
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How do I post surveys with buttons?
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I just want to clarify something if I may?
If I unlink the LN wallet I’m using to log into SN (my only log in method), can I then relink with a new LN wallet?
Is it a single process? Like A typical password change on most websites.
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First you'll need to link another backup method (like email) so you don't lose access.
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What does it mean when a comment is marked with a purple OP next to the user name?
I couldn’t find the answer on the FAQ
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I might have found the answer myself: Original Poster.
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Original Popstar 💫
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How can I merge a twitter and email account that are both already created? Anyway to fix this?
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unlink from one account and relogin to relink, fixed
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Is it possible to delete a post/comment?
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I just noticed there are some unanswered questions here and it may make sense to answer all of them in case someone looks into the FAQ and has the same questions:
it's possible now, click on "..." next to your post. There is a "delete" button.
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Not currently, but something we're considering.
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How do I withdraw from my stacker news wallet
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Click on your name in the top right corner, then wallet > withdraw
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Does stacker.news have a Lightning Channel that can be looked up?
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Yes, this is our connection string: 03cc1d0932bb99b0697f5b5e5961b83ab7fd66f1efc4c9f5c7bad66c1bcbe78f02@xhlmkj7mfrl6ejnczfwl2vqik3xim6wzmurc2vlyfoqw2sasaocgpuad.onion:9735
You can also find this info on our website footer.
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what is the formula for distributing sats to users? When I get sats from SN, I don't understand how that number is determined
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I seem to get sats for my contributions on SN. How is the amount of sats I recieve determined? I get sats from tips from other people, but I also get sats from stacker occasianally, how are this calculated or determined?
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Is there a way to follow someone specific on stacker news? I mean, can I have a filter of content posted by the people I follow or on which I would like to interact further?
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good question, I would like to know as well
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There is now, you can go to their profile and click on "..." to subscribe to posts or comments
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I forgot how I logged into stacker.news when I created my account..anyone got any idea how to figure that out? Pretty sure I used a wallet and logged in with lightning but can't remember which one..
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How do i boost posts and how can i forward tips?
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It’s under ‘options’ in the post form
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Hello everyone! I found this site while looking around for Bitcoin related discussion boards that weren't Reddit, and I'm happy to be here! It seems most of the posts here are pretty well thought out, and I'm looking forward to learning a lot more.
So are all the posts and comments in a private relay? Or could read the content from another client?
I know I see my wallet balance in upper right corner. where can I see my balance history, and see how the balance has evolved over time
Why I don't have lightning ⚡ button side my articles?
Why did you make this choice
Each user's tips are weighted by how much a user is trusted.
?
Why not just trust the amount of tips/sats? This would allow more spam to come in, but would make the algorithm more transparent and “trustless”.
Would like to see an option to set the post date/time to the block height number
How do I post a job?
Noob here, trying to fund my wallet here via lightning address from a Coinbase wallet. Funds have left coinbase, but I haven't received them here. What am I doing wrong?
Hello, I just signed up for Stacker News.
I am a top-rated content writer and business development expert that also double as a professional graphics designer.
I can confidently create, provide and manage high-quality content like articles, newsletters, whitepapers, social media posts and so on that will engage your audience, elevate your project, and increase your revenue in the same way I have done for top DeFi projects such as Centralex, SWFT Blockchain, Hotbit, CoinEx, ViaBTC, MetaPath, Astra Guild Network, GeroWallet, EthereumFair, and many more.
I am interested in teamwork and open to collaborating with projects to develop content strategies that align with their business goals and ensure that the project’s message resonates with the target audience and that our goals are achieved.
Here is my LinkedIn profile, where I have over 20,000 followers and a strong professional network, for your perusal: https://linkedin.com/in/agboobinnaya
I can send you some samples of the content I have written so far for some top DeFi projects and I am also available for a video call with you to discuss this further.
Let's connect.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
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The first part of your question is covered here: https://stacker.news/changes#02012023---easter-egg
Also, the bottom Lightning icon turns the full-screen Lightning bolt animations on or off.
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