A Theory of Everything for Zaps? \ stacker news ~meta

Alternative Zap Incentives

I just read #733858 and @Scoresby asked the following in there (see my emphasis):

What is the incentive for zappers?

SN rewards (and the leaderboard) look to me like an attempt to incentivize zapping.

If SN removes rewards, the only reason to zap good content is "good will." It seems to me that the less we have to rely on people doing the "right" thing and the more we give them an incentive to do the "right" thing, the better everything works.

(I would say this is one of the major flaws of most governments: we expect elected officials to do useful/good work without providing any sort of incentive to do so. People are self-intetested. We can rely on this.)

Do you have thoughts on alternative ways to incentivize zapping?

(I suppose an incentive for zappers might be to encourage more good content, do you think this is a good enough incentive?)

Unfortunately, this powerful question was ignored or nobody had answers.

However, I came up with an idea that might be able to unify what I call the "theory of v4v" and the "theory of incentives":

A Theory of Everything for Zaps?

What if zapping is incentivized not by rewards but by making SN more expensive to use if you don't zap?

In such a system, you essentially have the choice between paying more via posting fees or saving the costs by zapping stackers who produce the content you want to see.

Since you would pay the same in both cases—assuming you actually intend to post something—, "good will" is eliminated out of the v4v equation. It no longer matters since you're paying either way, it's just up to you who you're going to pay: Who provides you more value?

I think this system could make stackers happy that see the leaderboard and rewards as antithetical to v4v and I would agree with them. The problem (until now?) was just that we should not rely (exclusively) on good will for zaps.

Since zaps would still be used for ranking, the sybil fee would still exist in this system. So we would still have a pool of sats funded by fees that we could use for something. They could still be used to reward the top stackers (even more now). Zapping would also no longer be a Keynesian Beauty Contest since we no longer reward zapping so there are no opportunity costs to not zapping what you think others like. You can simply zap what you like.

Could therefore a system like this make everyone happy? Maybe, but there might be a few problems ...

Zap Budgets as Territory Settings

This system essentially creates a zap budget since posting fees can't go lower than the territory base fee. After that point, zapping is no longer incentivized and v4v boils down to good will only again.

But since these zap budgets exist per territory (it doesn't make sense to pay less in ~bitcoin because you zapped someone in ~nostr), if this becomes a real problem might simply depend on how high the initial zap budget per territory is and when they reset.

As an example for all of this, let's assume you're new on SN and you want to post something in ~bitcoin which costs 100 sats. However, since you're new, you haven't zapped anything today yet¹ so maybe it's actually 1000 sats because the zap budget for ~bitcoin is 900 sats. You're now incentivized to zap content in ~bitcoin you like before you post something. Since zapping is no longer rewarded as a signal for the frontpage, you can also zap old content, you just need to zap something in ~meta. In theory this should be the content you like.²³

This would also make territories feel more like territories since your participation in them via zaps directly contributes to you being incentivized to post there thanks to lowered fees.

But as mentioned above, this incentivze would only exist if you actually want to post something. If this also affects replies, it would be more effective but lurkers would still have no incentive unlike with rewards for zapping.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts, I am sure there is more fun to be had with this or completely different ideas for zap incentives since I literally came up with this what feels like a few minutes ago (according to my first message about this in our internal comms, I have been writing this post for 2.5 hours already).

Resetting them every 24 hours probably makes sense. ↩
this introduces a way for abuse again since zapping your self gives you the same lower fee as zapping someone else ↩
Another idea I had was to make this independent of order by reserving increased posting fees for zaps within the next 24 hours. ↩

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1 reply \ @ek OP 11h

you just need to zap something in ~meta.

there is the typo I wasn't able to edit in time. This should have been ~bitcoin of course.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 8h

No clarification needed! "something" is understood as the amount

179 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 10h

Structure drives behaviour, so engineering the processes such that people have to zap sufficiently to benefit from a lower posting fee sounds right in my books. I also like the idea of how zapping old posts will be stimulated.

I just think that for newbies who don’t have a lot of sats to start off with, they could be at a disadvantage since they don’t have so many “chips” to play with. (Unless we are moving towards a culture of attracting Bitcoiners who are able and willing to channel a pool of their own sats to SN.) But I came here with zero sats and built my empire from scratch haha. I hope this USP of SN can remain

16 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 9h

I also like the idea of how zapping old posts will be stimulated.

Mhh, just realized that this causes a disconnect: top content is only rewarded on the first day but zapping new content is no longer relevant. Maybe stackers would still rather zap new content than scroll through old content to find something they like but this disconnect is still concerning.

Sorry if I bursted your bubble haha

I just think that for newbies who don’t have a lot of sats to start off with, they could be at a disadvantage since they don’t have so many “chips” to play with.

This is a great point. We currently have freebies for this but not sure how well freebies would work with this system.

147 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 8h

Anything that mimics a real market (p2p, v4v) will work. Maybe the question is "where do SN differs from a real market, so that it provides undesirable incentives?". How will SN differ? In a real market every interaction is equilibrated, for you can only interact via v4v. So wherever there's no v4v, quality will degrade.

For example: low quality content in Nostr is being caused due to zero initial investment that can potentially lead to apparent effortless gains. But the risk to try is zero so even if it doesn't work it's a no-brainer to try just in case.

In social networks where there's no immediate economic revenue, there's nothing like "try just in case", and at most you have to spend great effort to attract a large enough audience to even start being able to make money. So at first zero risk is found with zero gains. This is a special case of v4v where costs are equally 0, so v4v transitions to content/reaction: you write to get a reaction you consider worthy. You give content to get content back.

In the case of SN, zap gains are equilibrated with the fact you have to spend to post. Having a high enough initial risk, the v4v in terms of money is equilibrated enough, so that v4v in terms of content/reaction is more independent of an imbalance in v4v in terms of money (Nostr is still imbalanced), prompting good quality content back again.

Follow the market. Exchange equilibrium is the maximum law. Anything else follows suit.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 7h

Hmm, very interesting post.

My first reaction was with my "engineering hat" on: Is there a problem here that needs fixing? In other words, are zaps not sufficiently incentivized right now? Is the "beauty contest" phenomenon becoming a problem?

From my observation, it doesn't look like there is a problem. Top posts can easily earn 20k-50k sats which is USD $18-$45, far above the minimum hourly wage in the U.S. and probably much more outside the U.S. Unless these zaps are mostly from SN-affiliated accounts, (or perhaps subsidized by a handful of generous stackers) it doesn't look like Stackers are being stingy with their zaps.

Moreover, I generally find the top posts to be good posts. So, if there's any beauty-contest dynamics going on, it doesn't seem to be elevating low quality posts, at least from my perspective.

But it does bring up the interesting question of why people zap. Here are some of my reasons:

For the cowboy hat / pistol
I find the people are more willing to engage with my content if I consistently zap their replies. This does two things: it tells them that I read their replies, even if I don't respond, and it tells them that their thoughts are valued.
By zapping, I encourage and reward the content that I want to see. While it's true I could potentially free-ride off other peoples' zaps, no one here has the same preferences as I do. If I want to tailor SN more to my own preferences, my only choice is to zap the content that I like.
- Strategically, I suppose the incentive here is to zap content that others don't like but I do. I think I do do this, in fact. I'm more likely to forget to zap a post that already has a bunch of other zaps, and more likely to zap lonely posts that I find interesting that others haven't yet elevated.

All this to say, I'm not sure that incentivizing more zapping is a problem that needs to be solved, yet. But this is my perspective as a user, perhaps SN thinks differently about it.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 7h

In my honest opinion, tweaking a lot with an established system that's working fine isn't a good idea at all.

Those who are trying to say that current system of rewards on SN is faulty are exaggerating a lot of things.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @Noobboy 8h

I am still a noob to understand all this yet i will say just do not try to change much as this platform is already good and superior to Hacker News and Reddit in terms of quality content. These changes should be needed when this platform have huge amount of people like HN.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 8h

Does this have to be an either-or choice?

It seems like cheaper posting fees could be an additional incentive, right alongside the rewards system.

33 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 11h

This is a very interesting idea, it’ll take me a bit to think it through.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @sangekrypto 9h

That's right, the post incorporates some discussion, just need some time to think about it.

21 sats \ 5 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 11h

Perhaps letting everybody know who is upzapping and who is downzapping would be beneficial. Is the price different for either? I know that the fee structure drives posting to differing territories, is that one of your incentives? Perhaps a good place to start would be to figure out what behaviors you specifically want to incentivize, then devise a strategy for zapping. You could arrange so a person with multiple accounts could NOT zap amongst them.

39 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek OP 11h

Perhaps letting everybody know who is upzapping and who is downzapping would be beneficial.

I don't think so, see #770984

Perhaps a good place to start would be to figure out what behaviors you specifically want to incentivize

zapping

You could arrange so a person with multiple accounts could NOT zap amongst them.

How? We already know who is zapping who. We just don't show it for privacy reasons and we can't know for sure if the same person is behind some accounts unless we KYC everyone which we obviously don't want.

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 10h

Another point is: does zapping come before incentives for other reasons or do other reasons come before zapping in the list of priorities? Where do you want more zapping? You could strengthen that on the leaderboard movement weighing

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 3h

We already know who is zapping who.

And that's why I zap mostly as anon.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Rothbardian_fanatic 11h

Aren’t there other behaviors that you want to encourage by the zapping? One of the problems with zapping is having enough to zap with. It is awfully tough for the nooby to zap when he does not have any sats to zap with. Perhaps arranging for some zaps to be more valuable on the leaderboard over others would encourage zapping. For instance, zapping a new bio, to get noobies going.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 3h

zapping a new bio, to get noobies going.

Wrong ! I found many assmilkers posting a "pro-bitcoin" bio just to grab more sats in the beginning and later they change the whole bio and even the alias and start posting crap. Be aware not be assmilked!

Better is to let them show their true face, it will be very fast in their first posts. If you do not know well a stacker, always go back to see their first posts...

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Satosora 11h

I feel there is still a lot of improvement that can be made on SN. First the CCs need to be rolled out before anything else. I did like what another post said, clarity in who zaps what would also be nice to see. I think there would be less abuse then. You were also hinting at territories that have select members, right? That would limit a lot of abuse, especially if each terrritory had an admin.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 11h

I did like what another post said, clarity in who zaps what would also be nice to see.

I can currently only imagine us implementing this as a setting: if you don't mind zapping in public, you can disable the privacy setting. Having all zaps be public with no opt-in or opt-out can also be a reason to not zap to not expose yourself. Being able to express your opinion in private is important.

But I guess a setting would defeat the reason why this was mentioned.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 11h

Im not saying it needs to happen. I just think it would keep the community a bit more honest if everyone could see where zaps were going. I feel like most of us wouldnt care, because we are honest with how we use SN. It would just help identify the abusers of the system.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 11h

A unified theory. Zap relativity meets Quantum zap mechanics.

Mind blown!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 3h

A problem I often face myself, is that I don't find the things I do sufficient or good enough, I.e: I'm already working 3+ months on a prototype for a pouch, in this case a Small- and Medium Version.

The reason for this is that I'm still very much a beginner, but also because I always feel like it can be done better, and that's absolutely fine - up to a certain point -, but there has to be a point on which one decides that it's good enough.

I think SN is at a point on which the platform is good enough already, because honestly: How often do you find people seriously complaining that the platform sucks? Compared to other options like Reddit, Twitter, Nostr ( from what I hear), we're absolutely nailing it over here on SN, why change that? Because it "could" be done better? Sure, but I think the risk / reward of changing SN "for the better" is becoming smaller and smaller... Let it be.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 3h

So far SN new features made me do big changes in my SN behavior. I didn't wanted to do these changes but I was pushed by SN several changes:

hide my SN account from the leaderboard
zapping from outside of my SN account. Yes I withdraw the sats and I zap anonymously so my zaps will not be reflected in my SN account stats (even that I hide it from leaderboard). I do not want ek to watch me.
downzaping a lot of shitcoiners and assmilkers. In the beginning I never done such thing, but now I am forced to do it. Maybe I should do it even harder.
zap less because there's no good content to zap.
I am too busy hunting assmilkers and shitcoiners than answering pertinent questions on SN. The level of questions about Bitcoin went really down on SN. Now a lot of bots and assmilkers only want to post endless "thanks", "nice post", and all kind of stupid answers that are not creating engagement at all. They just want to assmilk some few sats. And this end up in wasting time on SN.
I am posting less guides. Seeing that people are NOT interested at all in reading and learning, why I should write them ? Fuck'em. But this also have a consequence: people will learn less about Bitcoin. And that is not good.

So in conclusion, SN slowly became another reddit. All this pushing with "come to SN to earn sats" is a total bullshit. MAKE THEM PAY!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan 5h

don't the separate considerations for each territory divide them into separate silos?

So far, I pay much more attention to the post than the territory it was posted in. If the system incentivizes me to zap only in ~econ or ~booksandarticles or whatever, I have less reason to engage with anything else

Alternative Zap Incentives

A Theory of Everything for Zaps?

Zap Budgets as Territory Settings

Footnotes