So theres been a bit of discussion lately around Lightning spam or zapvertising, and just wanted to put our thoughts out there (since we were guilty of some of it πŸ˜…).
Firstly, we totally agree.... with everyone on both sides.
This is an idea with loads of potential, and could possibly be the greatest innovation in advertising ever. Its the epitome of value for value - Great way for advertisers to get directly to users (=value), and users getting actual Bitcoin for essentially doing nothing out of the ordinary (=value).
But also, spam sucks. If you don't like clutter, you're probably never going to like a bunch of random 1 or 2 sat payments in your wallet.
So we've decided to make a change. We will now only send payments to addresses that have specifically opted in to receiving them.
We think this might be a better way of doing it. Yes it cut down the reach (substantially), but in the process it will increase the quality of recipient. So advertisers wont be wasting sats on people that don't care, or worse, create negative sentiment for their business by spamming!
A higher quality of receiver means better engagement, which makes them worth more, which in turn should command a higher payment amount.
Is this the right decision? Who knows πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ
Have we shot ourselves in the foot by removing a large chunk of potential recipients? Maybe πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ
But we are part of a small group pioneering this new initiative, so we'll try some stuff and make it better as we go.
Also, YOLO right?
We're also working on some other features/ideas so stay tuned. If you have any questions or recommendations let us know!
And don't forget to add your Lightning address on our website if you want to get free sats and be part of the crew πŸ€™
This seems like a wallet UI/Notifications issue. Keep sending me sats. This is his the tools get better. People trying things.
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This whole discussion seems weirdly solved to me
Just add a threshold in the wallet to hide incoming payments under X sats. Donezo.
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Yep.
"You can still send me that 1 sat garbage, but I'm only paying attention to 100 sats or more."
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I mean how do clients solve email spam? Do that.
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Nah you're making a good decision, if you continue to send to people who don't want messaging the service will get a bad rep and brands will not want to use it.
While it might be a smaller group, you're growing a more active group so messaging will have a better CPC/CPA for those sending them.
I'm interested to see how this market develops since I've worked on email marketing, sms marketing, push notification marketing for companies in the past
I wonder how things like
  • frequency caps could change the marketplace, so pricing changes if they try to send more messages over a certain range
  • Would it be possible to use something like a hodl invoice to get the user to interact with the message to claim the sats and then use that as "deliverability"/View rate (pay a higher rate for this version)
  • Possibility of uploading a unique coupon list each user gets a different 1 time code tied to their LN address so brands have oversight over users who convert/claim the offer
  • Charging a premium to include UTM tracking in links for traffic attribution
  • User can send back a sat or sats on a campaign to opt-out of messaging from that advertiser
Would change the user behaviour
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I like this project and I like this solution :)
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Good move! It would be nice to add some personal choices when adding your address, For instance, a minimum amount to get ads and the ability to opt-out if necessary.
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Great idea, its definitely on the list! We can unsubscribe you manually by request of course, still thinking about a good way to handle it automatically.
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  1. User requests unsubscribe
  2. Eagle sats sends a 1 sat zap with confirmation code in the comments
  3. User provides confirmation code to Eagle sats to confirm unsubscribe. This proves ownership of the address
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can be abused to collect the sats
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Rate limit? Only send to subscribed addresses?
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Same could be done for subscribing
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kudos to you guys for reaching out here and getting community feedback!
personally, i thought the spam didn’t bother me until i began receiving a bunch of 1 sat payments.
now i wish i could somehow block the messages unless someone is willing to pay 100 or 1000 sats, maybe worth experimenting with fee tiers.
just my 2 sats.
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personally, i thought the spam didn’t bother me until i began receiving a bunch of 1 sat payments.
Yep totally agree. Thats one reason we lifted our minimum to 10 sats per payment. Hopefully find a spot where we can price out "spam" but keep advertising that may actually provide value.
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This should be handled at the wallet level. Allow users to set their price for attention, with a minimum sat threshold.
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Yeah way better to give the decision to user at wallet level with adjustments to thresholds and notifications imo
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Yeah maybe πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ
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Okay. I'm in. I'm curious enough to see how it works and I respect how you're going about it.
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Could be a good option to show the invoice text or a copy invoice button instead of only QR.
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We've just added this update now to make it easier to copy the QR code on mobile devices. πŸ‘
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"We will now only send payments to addresses that have specifically opted in to receiving them." I love this. If you could figure out a way to ask the user as well how many sats would you need to be willing to receive a zapvertisement that would be dope
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I wish normal traditional ads would pay me sats to watch them.
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I'm ready to be part of Bitcoin team that's why I added my lightning to your website
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πŸ€™
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A link to where to add our lightning address would be handy :)
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Hi, head straight to www.Satogram.xyz πŸ‘
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I see what you did there πŸ˜‚πŸ™
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Hi, head straight to www.eaglesats.com πŸ‘
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I dont mind spammy sats but my trust level of the advertised URL is less than zero.
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Hey I was checking out your service earlier today , and i noticed something that might be of interest to you , but maybe not , I don't know : When you have selected all of the options that you want , like how many sats, and how many people you want to send the message to, and you go to pay the invoice , you can only pay by scanning the qr code . If you are on your phone , you can't do that , so it is kind of forcing you to only use the service on your laptop . Maybe that was the intention , I don't know , just something that I have noticed. Also I was wondering , if you select only a portion of the possible recipients, lets just say you only select 100 people , how do you decide which 100 people that the message reaches , is it done randomly ?
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Hi, yeah addresses are chosen randomly from the pool, so that the first few don’t get everything and the last few miss out! Thanks for the feedback about paying on your phone, we’ll have a think about how we can make that better.
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Thanks for reply. Eaglesats , we salute you 🫑
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Hi @StackerKnacker we've fixed the QR issue now, so you'll be able to tap to copy the QR code on mobile devices. πŸ‘
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This, what you call "spam" has been talked about as a solution to actual spam/DDoS in the ol' Internet.
Want to send an email? Send a sat along with it. Want to show an ad? Give the viewer a sat for it. Want to hit a Web API? 402 Payment Required.
This would massively cut down on untargetted advertising due to its low clickthrough rate.
The issue is either on the UI side (need client side filters for tiny incoming tx) or there has to be a protocol extension which allows the recipient to set a minimum amount for certain activities. Or perhaps a rules-based engine (like link filtering) that allows rejecting certain transactions altogether.
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Have you looked into making a nostr client with built in ads, that pay out to the users lnurl address, that users can then use to pay for quality nostr relays?
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Theres a lot happening in NOSTR, but we're not working on anything there directly at the moment.
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We will now only send payments to addresses that have specifically opted in to receiving them.
What stops me from adding other ppl addresses?
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Well, nothing really. Lightning addresses are practically anonymous, which is a good thing. You can also add other peoples email addresses to random mailing lists if you wanted. Its just a dickish thing to do. We've already noticed people trying to take advantage of the system in other ways, but that is to be expected, and we'll be countering abuse if and when we see any.
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This can also work for subscription:
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Is there no way to unsubscribe?
For example, for mail subscriptions, there are laws that you must include an unsubscribe button. Obviously, LN is not SMTP. But I just wanted to mention this since the laws might be a source of inspiration for good UX :)
edit: looking at your site, I found this:
Can I remove my address from EagleSats? Certainly. Just send us an email to support@eaglesats.com or DM us on X with your Lightning address and LNURL and we'll remove you from the payments list.
I think having to send you an email or DM you on X is too much friction. Why is this not automated like subscribing?