In the past 24 hours, you may have seen ad over lightning where I conducted a casual social experiment, not adhering to strict scientific protocols but rather for amusement.
For this, I utilized eaglesats.com. A detailed discussion about this business model can be found in a recent post here: #316903.
The premise of the experiment was simple: I offered participants the chance to send me 1,000 sats, and in return, they would receive 2,000 sats back to their LNURL address, which they were instructed to include in their payment comments. I sent out about 5000 messages at 5 sats each.
Observations from the experiment include:
  • I collected approximately 15,000 sats and paid out around 20,000 sats. Some participants sent smaller amounts, likely skeptical of a potential scam. After immediately reimbursing the first participant, I decided to wait until the experiment concluded an hour ago. This was to prevent others from creating multiple addresses to exploit the system after realizing the offer was legitimate.
  • Over 90% of the participants used Wallet of Satoshi.
  • Some participants failed to follow simple instructions. I received several 1,000 sat payments without a corresponding return address. Consequently, I didn't need to disburse 30,000 sats in total. This issue could also stem from a limitation in some wallets where custom messages are truncated, as discussed in one of the comments here: #316903.
  • The experiment showed that people are still vulnerable to falling for double-your-bitcoin scams. While I did honor the payback in this case, malicious actors might not do the same.
Yesterday, the minimum payment on eaglesats.com was 5 sats/message. Now, it is at 10 sats/message. I presume this is as a reaction to the messages posted here: https://primal.net/e/note1ym0p4qlswhkhxfz5wqs23j5rrkuc6zlgn0z0kw3xxlmzvjsfv3sqzs5hqa to avoid people getting spammed for too little money.
On second thought, they used WoS for the LNURL address to send the money back to. I don't know which wallet they used to send me the money.
Also, I didn't send out a message to everyone to close the experiment, but I'll just reimburse anyone who still sends me money pointing them to this post.
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I think that the reason for people using WoS is that in that wallet you can easily read the message.
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Makes sense. They must have harvested my getAlby address, so I've been getting the ad messages there. As it's a browser extension, it's less visible than getting popups on your phone with WoS.
As a side note, WoS today has said they won't show notifications anymore for this type of messages, as a response to the amount of spam people have been getting. You still get the sats, but you must actively look for the messages in your history to read the ad.
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I got one notification for an ad yesterday, then 3 more silently delivers payments for ads. The change must have just went live
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Yesterday, the minimum payment on eaglesats.com was 5 sats/message. Now, it is at 10 sats/message. I presume this is as a reaction to the messages posted here: https://primal.net/e/note1ym0p4qlswhkhxfz5wqs23j5rrkuc6zlgn0z0kw3xxlmzvjsfv3sqzs5hqa to avoid people getting spammed for too little money.
This doesn't stop new similar services from being created that offer 1 sat/message.
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Yeah, it'll be wallets responsibility to filter out spam, most likely. Let's see how WOS strategy works out.
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Nice expirment
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Cool experiment
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So this is you Social_experiment@stacker.news
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Yes. Used this other account to have a recognizable name for the experiment.
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I got another ad from this experiment today, so I sent sats from my SN wallet to @social_experiment. Hopefully the invoice doesn't expire :)
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I'll check after I log in with my other account (can't do it on my phone), but it's over. I'll send you back the SATs though.
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I was surprised to get the zap today but I did 🤷‍♂️
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Funny I also just now got my own ad sent to my address. I guess they must take several days to send out all messages...
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What return address did you specify? I'm seeing 3 new payments, 2 without return address in the comments...
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lnbc20u1pj40rrwpp5f72hd02vtn3awq9c3v4kd6p39mnl62ytusxn67qsvxy3x46yjslsdzqge6kuerfdenjqszhv4qhye2pd3k9xct5daeks6fqdahzqum5v93kketj9ehx2amncqzzsxqrrs0sp50vzw8z7rsd0kp38jc0evd8h5095guadxsvam4m7y25fg5k4pke3q9qyyssqh90txlup4qaedzwgynju4a44ducsydxzdpcv6akf7q8nd09253gz24vfsml7yuxaxanzu6w49el0s77qsl8fa0r93ljlvqg9k3k97lcpl6vrru
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Yeah invoice is expired. Just tipped you here instead.
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Cool, thank you for returning the sats! I definitely would have ignored the ad if I hadn’t seen your post about it here first
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satsvertisment received in my walletano wallet. but the problem with walletano is, we cant put @ or . in note. that is very weird.
i use wos and blink. i guess blink also have same functions with wos
btw, it is a great experiment though
regards and thanks fam, kitakripto@blink.sv liberaldress14@walletofsatoshi.com
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We are correcting this issue.
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Curious question I am getting the sat ads. How do I sign up my friend? She wanted to be added. I think I got on it for using nostr.
But not sure