Last week, I posted a link to @gigi's Careful Icarus post (#1494022) about how bad an idea onchain zaps are.
Now, here is Alex Gleason's defense of onchain zaps:
Since I first read NIP-01 (Nostr's equivalent of a whitepaper) I have been thinking about the fact that Nostr keys are Bitcoin addresses. It's the first thing anyone thought when they read NIP-01.
Gleason thinks that nostr was built for Bitcoin interoperation and that lightning hasn't delivered on it:
For 3 years Lightning is the ONLY way people have been transacting on Nostr. And yet, "I can't zap you" is probably the top phrase repeated on Nostr. People have tried very hard to make it better, and the only ones who succeeded did so by making Bitcoin LESS free, LESS Open Source, and LESS magical.
And it's hard to argue with this last point: while lightning is pretty awesome, the reality is that most nostr zapping uses custodial wallets. The same is likely true for SN.
It mattered to send $0.02 when we still thought Nostr could overtake Twitter, and thousands of likes could translate into potentially real money. Now it's clear that's not happening, yet Nostr is still stuck in that expired mentality. $0.02 in Lightning is not actually useful to people — it costs more to get it out, and is almost impossible to convert it into "real money" anyway. To be useful, we need to start sending real value that people can actually use.
Instead of zapping a few sats, Gleason suggests we should be zapping tens of thousands of sats or more:
I gave away $2,000 in a weekend with no Lightning channels, no LNURL servers, no invite codes, no anxiety. People I had never spoken to received it instantly. Nobody had to ask permission. Nobody had to set anything up. That is what Bitcoin was supposed to be, and that is what Bitcoin already is, the moment you stop apologizing for it.
It strikes me that nostr is struggling with some of the same problems that are generating anxiety in bitcoin in general (at least in some circles): where is the adoption?!? Nostr's most popular use-case as a competitor to Twitter isn't panning out and so the natural response is to try new things. Micropayments are out, onchain zaps are in.
Gleason feels that onchain zapping improves the nostr experience on many levels, not just UX:
It promotes virality, triggers important discussions, and the "above ground" nature of it lends it legitimacy and credibility, legal protection, scale, democratic participation, and sustainability.
I don't buy it. If people aren't willing to zap a few sats instead of click a like button, they aren't going to send someone a few hundred thousand sats. Social media needs micropayments. If the adoption isn't here yet, it's because it isn't easy enough.
Extremely entitled argument. "Look at me, I'm rich af, just be like me and stop being poor"
I don't think he meant it that way, but I agree that it isn't an argument that wins very many to his side.
On the other hand, the reality is that micropayments are not catching on like we all -- or maybe just me -- expected. And that is somewhat surprising.
I never expected v4v to get very far. People don’t pay for stuff they don’t have to.
#886778 was a good post about this
Oh and micropayments != v4v
Agreed in general but in the context of nostr that’s what he’s talking about
because of his fiat mindset expressing the valeu in dollars not sats
This is where his problem starts, mixing different things together to make them look like one.
Then, he sells the solution to a problem that doesn't even exist.
Irony being nostr wouldn't exist, nevermind have the traction it does, if not for lightning
I have thoughts:
The issue isn't with lightning, the issue is with nostr itself.
Setting up a non custodial wallet is pretty trivial, you can do it on an iPhone. I remember seeing zap-locker sat 'notifications' on my apple watch in real time and it blew my mind.
With respect... I strongly disagree. People aren't on nostr and they aren't zapping not because zapping can't or doesn't work... But because people are lazy AND/OR they don't know lightning exists.
Not true. I'll take a 'free' 2 cents any day of the week and twice on Sundays. It is easy with effort to find places to spend bitcoin, where that 2 cents can go towards something...
And if you cannot find somewhere anywhere and stacker news isn't your cup of tea, there is always routstr where you can pay for AI prompts. Those zaps will add up and literally pay for AI inference which is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.
This is a bad idea. There is nothing wrong with 10 sats at a time.
Philanthropy is all well and good and very commendable... But is completely missing the point IMO.
The adoption is missing because bitcoin has no marketing department. People come to bitcoin because in one way or another they have tried everything else (in life, not in crypto). It is almost impossible to force people to bitcoin... And the only marketing it DOES have is shades of crypto twitter which has nothing to do with bitcoin.
In other words, people are lazy.
Twitter is 17 years old has paid advertisements, a CEO, a huge marketing team and is incredibly centralized. You can't (I couldnt) even access twitter with a VPN.
Social media micropayments isn't about 'making money' it is about spam reduction. You pay one way or the other... Either through advertisements, surveillance, or SLOP.
I rather pay tiny amounts of money and have a way better experience and that's what keeps me coming back to Stacker News and Bitcoin in general.
In my experience it takes a very specific set of character skills, background, and curiosity to 'get' bitcoin and nostr is an even more advanced application of it. Overwhelming people doesn't work... It takes time the vast majority of people don't "get it" instantly and having no CEO or marketing department only makes it that much more difficult.
Real thoughts
I appreciate your emphasis on the viability of micropayments. Zaps are awesome and definitely work and I'm still of the belief that it is one of the basic use cases of bitcoin.
SN is based on the idea that monetary actions generally carry more signal than free actions. I think this is bearing out, but I do wonder if it has been proven in the case of spam. I think SN has less spam than other social media, but it might just be that we have less users and are less of a target. Spam reduction is certainly another use case of bitcoin, but I don't think we have made the most convincing case of it, yet.
You say this twice and I agree with you. How do you think we can make Stacker News more appealing to lazy people?
enable ad banners for the lazy ones who'd rather sell out than pay to post
'How do we make stacker news appeal to more people... Who have never tried bitcoin, who don't know what lightning is, who don't understand the basic premise...'
I think this is self-selective and short of having 'more time'...
Better wallet UI, more reliable lightning spends, more places to spend bitcoin (like square), and the ****coiners getting absolutely recked.
To me the entire premise of bitcoin is the harvesting of extra energy to create capital - money basically - with decentralized traits that allows for better human interaction.
Right now we 'pay' using the internet with surveillance, ads, or slop (ai slop everywhere). The cost of posting and the small drip drip of sats should be the 'proof of life' that the user has something to say that they have 'skin in the game' when they interact with others.
Otherwise the power goes to advertisers, big tech and we are overrun with bots who 99% have nothing to say.
The fact that bitcoin is sound and transparent... And you can mine to your own bolt-12 or LNaddress is the 'drip' that you take with you to forums and online interaction. Basically the hash-cash of online interaction that proves you're not a bot.
I think the fallacy is thinking stacker or anything Bitcoin related should be 'cheap' or 'free' or 'just lowering costs' makes the service more valuable - people pay lots of money to use things that provide them positive feedback and in fact... Most high-value experiences require some form of payment to start.
Take for example Proton Mail. When they wanted to offer paid email... They got laughed at.
Look at them now. People will clearly pay for 'better email' that eliminates advertising and minimizes surveillance (although there is always some).
I see this period where useful apps and experiences are built on bitcoin that are NOT about more money or speculation noone is getting rich on zaps.
Nor should the focus be on being a 'bitcoin forum' just as amazon wasn't an 'internet company' they were a shopping company that was more appealing to customers who could now shop conveniently.
IMO we need the killer app that uses micropayments and I think SN is on the right track but it requires all this other baseline knowledge... And that's why the userbase is so small right now.
Why aren’t these people more interested in Stacker News?
We’re proof that you can build a system where meaningful amounts of bitcoin do get zapped to creators. Maybe try to understand what’s working here and try building it into your thing… or just switch to SN and help build it.
yes, but also it's not like it's meaningful enough to become a serious source of income (at least not yet). I often think about Darth's insistence that the innovation of SN isn't zaps, but pay-to-post.
Maybe zaps are the way we draw these people in, but when I read Gleason's piece here it was clear to me that he is still thinking of zaps as a way to earn money and I'm not sold on that.
I love micropayments, but I don't know that I love them in the v4v, earn a living sense.
I don't know that there are any good examples of platforms where people earn a living solely by tips... that is, voluntary contributions after the product is already freely available.
That being said, lightning micropayments could support a bunch of other business models like patreons, super chats, subscription tiers, etc. It doesn't just have to be tips.
I get it. My point is that there’s a place with an order of magnitude fewer users that manages an order of magnitude more zaps.
Perhaps there’s something to learn from that model for those concerned about low zapping on their product.
Randomized npubs / bc1 addresses
Generate a fresh npub bc1 address for receiving, just like anonymous lightning zaps do now (on Amethyst btw)
Link it back to your main identity via NIP59 wrapper
Why link it back?
Ok Don't 🤣🤣🤣
I repeat myself, but I'm not the only one:
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Maybe what Gleason is describing is more like a payments network like Zelle or Venmo, where people connect their social identity to sending and receiving payments...but I think it's telling that none of those fiat apps have integrated a strong social media element.
Crap, I should have made a post about what happens with your anon set if you post notes from the same key that you transact on L1 with. Or well... Would be a short post. Haha.
yes, voluntarily creating a pile of radioactive utxos seems like a horrible idea to me.
Gleason has a whole section in the post about integrating Silent Payments into onchain zaps, but I don't see how that actually fixes anything -- I can imagine that the transaction sweeping a pile of small zaps into your stack is going to be disastrous for your privacy...Silent Payments or no.
Like NIP-04 except this time with money, not GMDMs.