Hey @k00b, @Scoresby pointed out this call for papers from the University of Wyoming's Bitcoin Research Institute. I know we had talked about potentially doing research with SN data before (#953437), but I think this might be the motivating drive needed to get me actually moving on this. A 500 word abstract is due on December 1st, 2025, and the conference itself would be in July 2026.
I wrote a sample abstract to illustrate some of the ideas I'm thinking. Let me know what you think and if you'd want to move forward with it.
Sample Abstract
Stacker News is an internet message board in the style of Reddit that uses Bitcoin micropayments sent over the Lightning Network. Users can send each other Bitcoin micropayments, called "zaps" (usually on the order of 1-100 Satoshis, but sometimes ranging into the thousands), to reward each other for posting content that they like and to encourage the production of similar content. The platform also uses micropayments as a form of sybil, spam, and bot resistance. Users must pay a fee to post, which discourages them from posting low quality content or from creating sock puppet accounts. Users who consistently post high quality content can earn enough zaps to turn a profit net of posting fees.
Because Stacker News is a messaging platform that uses real money, it is an ideal setting for studying how financial micro-incentives affect internet discourse. There is variation in posting fees across the platform's subforums (called territories) and across time, allowing us to study how content quality and discourse correlates with posting cost. The results shed light on how adding a small cost to posting content online influences the quantity of quality of said content.
In late 2024, three years after its launch, Stacker News also transitioned from operating as a Lightning custodian to enforcing the use of self-custodial Lightning wallets. Users who connected Lightning wallets could continue sending and receiving real Bitcoin; however, users who elected not to connect wallets could only send and receive "Cowboy Credits", a token usable only on Stacker News but whose value within the platform is pegged 1:1 to the value of a sat. We can use this sudden bifurcation in users to study whether posting behavior changes depending on whether the user is able to receive real Bitcoin or if they can only receive Cowboy Credits. We can also use this change to study the frictions and barriers in getting users to adopt self-custodial Bitcoin solutions.
An internet message board with real-money peer-to-peer micropayments is only possible because of the low cost, instantaneous transaction speed, and international connectivity of the Lightning Network (Stacker News boasts active users from all over the world). In our view, such a platform would likely be infeasible using traditional fiat payment networks, due to higher cost, slower transaction speed, and international banking frictions. Stacker News therefore presents a clear use case for the utility of Bitcoin. The results of this research add to the body of evidence showing how Bitcoin adoption enables new markets and influences real world outcomes---in this case, in the realm of internet discourse.
(424 words)
In terms of setting out some clear expectations at the outset, I can think of the following. Let me know if there are any other issues you'd want to discuss:
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I'm happy to grant you co-authorship as the data provider. Also happy to grant additional co-authorship to anyone at SN who contributes significant work / writing / thought partnership to the project.
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In terms of the help I'd need from you and your team, it'd mostly consist of the following:
- Requests for data dumps (we can work out a method for secure transfer)
- Help with answering questions about the data or about the history of SN; for example, "How can I see when a territory changed its posting fee?", or "I'm noticing a weird pattern here, did a bug happen around that time?" etc.
- (Optionally) Help generate ideas for what else to do with the data
- (Optionally) Provide feedback on any results and writing
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Other than the above, I'm happy to do all of the actual research work; but if you or anyone on your team wants to jump in and contribute more directly that would also be welcome.
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I'm willing to respect whatever privacy conditions you want to place on the data.
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As @Undisciplined once suggested, I'm thinking of doing this research "in public". That is, posting frequent updates on SN and even maintaining the project's code in an open source repository. Let me know if that's amenable to you. If not, I could certainly do it with a private repo. (The data, of course, would not be made public.)
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All code I use for the project would be made available to your team. If any of the work helps with your internal analytics, you're free to use any of it.
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I would, eventually, be targeting to publish this in an academic journal of some kind. Which journal is TBD and open for discussion.
That's all I can think of for now. If this is something you want to move forward with, let me know. I think the first step would be to have a discussion on what data is needed for the first set of exercises, and how best to provide it in a secure, privacy-preserving way.