What: From 1/1 till the end of January, or until I run out of money (whichever happens first), I'm setting my default zap to 1k sats for content that I see in the course of my normal SN activity that adds value to the site.
Why: To see what kind of difference one person (me) can make sending economic signals on SN, and what the economic consequences will be given SN's current rewards paradigm.
Context: @ezkyis posted about an experiment he's running, zapping until he's given all his sats away, and seeing how long he can stay alive. @WeAreAllSatoshi has been doing something similar for a while now. Some time ago, @Undisciplined posted about an experiment of auto-adjusting his zap amounts based on what he has in his wallet. @carlosfandango and I were discussing the feasibility of implementing a version of this operation.
Yeah, but why do you think this will do anything? 1k sats is probably at least 20x what the median zap rate is, judging by the zaps I get. While this amount of money won't be significant to most people, the social signal that someone is appreciated by me should stand out quite clearly. And also, when I was doing the book club series of posts, a couple of extremely generous people zapped me every time. That was really encouraging, so maybe this smaller but broader shotgun approach will encourage someone else.
What does "adds value" mean exactly? They're my sats, so it means whatever I think adds value to SN. In particular, some of the things I particularly value include:
  • nuanced thought
  • interesting or novel perspectives
  • elegant or careful or beautiful writing
  • building on top of / adding value to other SN content via linking, composition, meta-commentary
  • caring for the SN community, or at least not being an arrogant and sancrimonious douchebag
I posted a hot take and didn't get a 1k zap. Wtf? Either I didn't think your hot take added any particular value, or else I didn't see it. I'm not going to alter my SN consumption practicers (a 2024 goal is to be stingier with where I allocate my attention), so won't be searching to the ends of the earth to uncover every worthy SN post or comment. Some things will fall through the cracks.
Other details: I'll do my best to report on how this is going, but I'm not very good at keeping track of shit, so the reporting won't be as good as one might wish for.
Other thoughts: I'm having a bit of angst over my usual interaction paradigm, where I zap nearly every reply someone makes to me as a "thank you" to my conversation partner, unless I have some reason not to do that, or if the conversation gets really long. I'm worried that zapping 1k sats might bias me against this practice, and have a rebound effect in the opposite direction of what I want. Should I do a different amount for these kinds of zaps? Undecided about this.
RFC: I'm deferring till 2024-01-01 in order to think this through a little more, which means that discussion / suggestions / thoughts are very welcome.
Call to action: If you're reading this and are feeling an idea for an N=1 experiment stirring in your heart, do it! Or comment below, and we can think it through together.
Thanks: Vielen dank to the dudes named above for the inspiration.
I also zap almost every response I receive so I can understand your apprehension in how kilo zapping might affect the way you interact with people. Might be a good idea to maintain a base level "hey thanks for commenting" zap and use the kilo zap for the most thoughtful posts, comments, etc.
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Go big or go home. No risk it, no biscuit,
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Says the one with 288 instead of 1k as his zap default
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Fair. Make me a SN millionaire and I'll start kilo-zapping too.
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There you go!
that weren't all my sats between these two screenshots btw
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"A million sats isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion sats."
Haha, sorry I had to.
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I'll try to think of a million cool comments for @elvismercury to zap.
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remember my 11 sats when you made it to the top
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There you go :)
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that weren't all my sats between these two screenshots btw
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I see what you both did there, but you failed to account for my reckless spending.
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It's like being a million miler -- it doesn't matter how many miles you currently have, it's just how many you've ever earned.
This isn't a UBI you're getting here, bro ;)
288 was pretty damn impressive until now.
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It's not that impressive (at least not morally). It's a pretty self-serving amount, since it generates more earnings than it costs.
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The wonder that is Stacker News.
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67 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 28 Dec 2023
tbh, my zap default is 1. I just like to be precise.
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I still have my default as 10 but I rarely use 10. Typically 50 or 100. Although 10 is useful for when you are tagged in a discussion such as this one. Then I will just zap all the notifications 10 and engage with the ones I want and zap the ones I am directly involved in either 50 or 100.
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I do the same, and agree that maybe 1k is too much for a thank you zap.
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Lol. I think we need a second button for 1 sat ‘zips’
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
I used to zap 21sats, then 50.
I think I've found a nice balance with 101sats. Every day my SN stack goes down a little until I get a comment or post that brings it back up.
1k is amazing when you're on the receiving end. If I were to bring it up to that level I think I'd be thinking about it too much. Does this post REALLY deserve this many sats?
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It's been interesting to observe myself -- my buy-in to SN was 10k sats, everything else was zaps I've received, which makes me feel very pro-social: my overwhelming desire is to pay it forward for the larger good, just as I received other people's generosity and was encouraged by it.
With one exception! I really don't want to get rekt and go to zero. I'll be paying attention to the feels as this unfolds, since it's hard to imagine it will be accretive sats-wise.
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Does this post REALLY deserve this many sats?
Everything is worth what it's purchaser will pay for it.
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At first I read the heading and thought to myself, sounds like some kind of bragging. After reading, and weighing criticisms I've heard towards zaps in any denomination, I believe it's worthwhile that communities and strangers would do the same (read and weigh the importance as they see it.)
Over the year, I've adopted selectivity in v4v and try to show appreciation where I see value to myself. On SN, I'm more consistent (and more measured) in that I genuinely enjoy the community and various takes I read or interact with. I don't really write, so it's surprising and always appreciated when someone does the same.
Things that I get value from here might just be someone posting links to unpaywalled articles, privacy enhanced links. People don't need to do those things (obviously they know how to find and use resources for themselves) so it's like throwing a tip. Something not customary to my home country.
Anyways, what I wanted to say, there's this built-in tendency in all of us that migrated from the more insidious dopamine inducing 'like' paradigm, to the more legit world of tips. Moved back to, perhaps. So, it's almost as if we have to actively monitor expectations. Sharing thoughts, or interacting and not receiving a zap needs to be maintained as the standard. Which I guess you said in another way.
But maybe equal, measuring the value here and there with an extra zero or two, when is appropriate to you, however infrequent, maybe is also the way to go.
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I'm committed to 21sat zaps. In 2020 I got cocky and lost a lot of Bitcoin (to me it was a lot). I think it's Noble but I see 1000 sats / 1,000,000 mSats as being a weeks salary one day.
As a producer I fund No Agenda along with about 20,000 other people in a year. That's my bag. I think the position you are taking is cultivation so those 1000 sats should be for some real banger folks.
I have donated thousand intervals of sats to the reward pool here. AI want those who run this project to have a good pool to splash in.
Anyway, I love this whole deal so I'm going to cheer you on. But seriously, here my inner grandpa, "don't blow it all in one place."
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Haha, I appreciate your inner grandpa.
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Some things will fall through the cracks.
I miss a lot of useful posts just to have someone link it up in comment so everything happens for a reason. What you see is what you get.
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That idea is what's motivating this thing that I value:
building on top of / adding value to other SN content via linking, composition, meta-commentary
When people compose out of more atomic SN pieces (e.g., you make a post or a comment and reference older SN stuff to add synthesis, commentary, new info, etc) it gives those things a second life, and allows them to be discovered by people who missed them the first time around.
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You'll have a story how you were zapping month salary to random stackers
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Jesus, I hope so. That would be doing a lot more good in the world than I'm accustomed to doing.
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Everything in your hands 😉
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Before my current experiment/quest, I tried raising my default zap 10x and I found that it did change my behavior pretty dramatically. I was much tighter about what I zapped, especially smaller replies in a conversation.
That was actually part of my motivation for trying to more systematically find the right default zap amount. I wanted to continue zapping freely without worrying about going broke.
Now, I'm well above the default zap level that initially changed my behavior, but because of how I got here I was able to maintain the habits I wanted to have. People are weird.
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I'm trying to find the level where my zaps balance out with my rewards, so I'm using a very straightforward method of adjusting the default value until I get there.
Once I reach equilibrium, I might think about doing something similar to what you're doing. I have been thinking that I probably should be zapping good posts more than good comments.
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Please do make that post.
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maybe i should make a post about that.
let these zaps guide you on your path
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did you receive the reward from today?
I did. It was for top posts and comments, not zapping.
Not only does zapping increase your rewards share (on days where zapping gets rewarded), it's extremely non-linear: i.e. being the 2nd highest zapper is worth much more than being 3rd.
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I love this experiment. I set my default to 111 a while back to make it a zap signature so people would get used to the idea that it was me who zapped them. I had also been wondering what would happen if I made a post that promised to empty my wallet into the comments for the next week. what would that do to the reward pool? and could it become a post that keeps feeding the wallet for the whole week or would it empty out and not come back after 24 hours?
in my first few weeks when i was more active, i was finding it hard to get my balance to stay down because i kept getting repaid by the rewards pool (and by fellow zappers). Fun idea.
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This is going to be interesting… Particularly when you get toward the bottom of the zap barrel…. How discriminating will your zapping become? I have played around with different zap amounts and it does change your attitude to acknowledging content.
In addition to small (value based/received) sat bombs for content I do give a token zap when in conversation which is a ‘I have read your comment’ zap.
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Context: @ezkyis posted about an experiment he's running
I really need to change my nym to @ek.
Regarding the rest of the post (I haven't read it all yet, I tend to comment too fast when I see something that I want to comment on):
I might use this post as my sat dumpster at the end of the day.
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Oh shit, sorry! I wonder how many times I've done that?
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No worries, you weren't the first and you won't be the last one haha
This is the first one that I noticed from you - at least as far as I remember.
It is a really hard nym. I don't even know how to pronounce it myself lol. If you don't know how to say something, it makes it especially hard to know how to write it.
I'm setting my default zap to 1k sats
#245468 I did "kilo-zapping" before it was cool... ;)
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Being on the leading wave of trends is a thankless job.
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well said this annoying truth ;)
but wait, that was you among others - receiving there kilo-zapping from me, haha (but it was worth it! ;)
i just did a zapathon post for a site I run, got maybe 200+ re-posts and gave 1k sats to each reposter.
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I appreciate the creative and thoughtful approach. As we approach year end, this will cause myself and others to reflect on your thoughts and make changes to make SN a more valuable platform for all in the future. All non bots that is.
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Man, those are a lot of sats you're giving out. If you got money to spare like that, consider.helping out some lightning developers like the guya at lnbits or poor people like me. lol. Fr tho
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Turbozapping checkbox in the settings may be the answer to make the comments zapping by default to 100 sats for example and then for good posts or content if you zap it again it zaps 1000 and then 10000 and so on. maybe dangerous if you click too fast heh :D
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Vielen dank
Does that mean 1M sats lol
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Wow! Awesome initiative, it takes guts to move in the direction
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Incredible gesture. I think I will try do something similar. So much signal in this place. @k00b has made SN into a new protocol.
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
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maybe killazaps
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