@Dawn you have now met your weekly quota 🤣 

 😂🤣🫂 I couldn't resist.

You're right though... but I also think nostr is just in a bit of a lull (which is probably ok since there seems to be some very basic functionality issues being addressed) 

 

 There is definitely some ebb and flow of user activity, and that’s been the case at least the last year and half since I joined. But zaps in particular have fallen off a cliff. I just shared this in another thread.

nostr:note1xkn4xltl0ap4f9qasvaxtszzcdphx49ycc6svk44ref0jk9dlf7qn9p9d6 

 💯 there is a lack of zappable content once you leave the topic of btc for the most part.  Everything is niche in a small community and value is so subjective. It's going to be pretty difficult barrier to break but initiatives like the residencies & people deciding to run content accounts (bravo) are steps in the right direction. 
  

 I like the spirit of the effort behind the residencies, although I question their effectiveness. Seems like a better approach would be to simply run an outright label/agency and take on artists and promote them for an agreed upon split of revenue. But yea, the pool of high quality content is small, and I think that’s where I keep coming back to my chicken and egg meme 😂 

 Everything should be tried. Eventually something(s) will stick. 🐣🫂 

 I wish I was only zapping that much, or little lol 

 lol yea the majority of the zaps are definitely being sent from a much smaller subset of users than than the total active user base. 

 noobs flying down the expanding rabbithole need time to clearly land imho/  so many branches 

 THIS ☝️ yep! 

 That would be better way to 

 Here's the real link. The first one just goes to the PI website.

https://stats.podcastindex.org/v4v 

 That is completely incorrect, Facebook got massive because university students wanted an easy way to share pictures and tag friends, they had tens of millions of users before they even thought of the advertising model. People didn't use Facebook to look at ads, it was because of the product was good.

I can't even see 20% of the replies to your note because they aren't in my relay list, we can't even do the basics  

 The reasons people used facebook and the reasons Facebook got massive are not the same topic. Facebook absolutely started finding ways to monetize localized user data early on, and its growth potential combined with the potential to monetize that localized data is one of the reasons investors saw value in the company. Nostr’s design allows it to not be captured by those same corporate/advertiser interests. That should be an exciting prospect, unless your only goal is to argue with me.  

 My goal is to try to get Bitcoiners to stop with their echo chamber nonsense and ACTUALLY make nostr work for the masses. I am bought in I have my own relay and zap node, contributions to NIPs and clients. But there is a reason why we're not growing and it's not because a lack of zaps. Or because people don't understand freedom. 

It's because the UX is trash, it's too complicated, there are no easily accessible discovery algorithms and it's just a bunch of us autists stackers circle jerking ourselves and posting the same mantras over and over again 

You know what would increase zaps the most? Actually having more people here. Not circulating the same sats between the handful of bitcoiners already here. 

 nostr:note1gcsycsgmmmu3fspl2vl8ravw36snj2whpg4g084emgd8zrq2cyhssawvyn 

 Definitely😂
I guess we need a combination of more tipping per user and more users overall 

 Its a mistake to think anyone is here for sats.

Take zaps away and see what happens. nostr still grows... 

 Grows into what though? It will simply be a repeat of the existing social/content platforms.  

 I doubt that. 

The only people that need sats from nostr are the relays who have to pay for bandwidth and I'm happy to provided value for value there. I sometimes zap memers but I certainly don't feel obligated to. Content creators and artists are free ply their wares but there is no guarantee of income anywhere as I've seen some horrible art presented here that I would pay 1 sat for.

Does nostr need ad revenue? No.
Sponsors? No.

What else then? 

 On youtube creators get ad revenue, same on other platforms. Don’t you want to incentivize creators to be here? 

 It depends on what they create?  If I create pictures of dog shit, should I be compensated.

Lika all of us, skilled devs need to work in the fiat mines until NgU and donate time and effort. 

 Do you think someone who creates pictures of dog shit gets ad revenue from youtube? 😂 

 I've seen worse than that get revenue. But you have missed the point. 

 I think you missed mine. But that’s okay. Enjoy your day 

 No I didn't miss your point. It was non-sequitur.

But you are a more important pleb on nostr than me so feel free to be dismissive. 

 More important? That’s a weird comment to make. No one is more important than anyone else. 
We were talking about creators getting compensated for their work. I don’t see what dog shit has to do with it 🤷🏾‍♂️ 

 If I create crap content and expect to get compensated for it then I am delusional.

If I create good content and don't get compensated for it then I need to lower my expectations or find another market or create for the love of creating.

If I get well compensated for my content then as a member of a free market social experiment, I am grateful but cannot dictate what my content will be valued at. For example I have taken time and effort to explain the bottom line on the truth of nostriches spending sats on content. My content was good and yet I did not receive on sat for it , but since I expended time and effort because of my love for nostr I am not disappointed.

Again, IMHO at this point only relay operators have the ability to dictate income to match their expenditures. 

 I got your point. No one is arguing that bad content shouldn’t get rewarded. 
My point was the incentive for a creator (not someone who makes dog shit) to use nostr. The point of the original note. 

 I'm not going to beat a dead ostrich.

A lot of the content is dog shit and its as though the creators expect to get compensated.

Truly exceptional content will be compensated but the level of it cannot be dictated. 

 👍🏾 

 I reposted because you didn't reply to this. 

Maybe if you lol people that repost it will help. 

 Relay operators are the only people in the world who need to make money?  

 Value for value on nostr, so yes for now. Without relays we have no nostr. Dev's that write code are nice to have but since the basics are already laid down, it could stop here and sostr would be fine.

You are pushing the zap thing to some kind of extreme which will only work if its organic and can't be forced. 

 I believe we are probably coming from different viewpoints on the use case for nostr. It has many use cases, including being a place where creators and artists can connect with audiences and directly monetize their work while cutting out middlemen such as advertisers and centralized content platforms. Nostr has other use cases too. Not all of them require a zap/v4v economy. Not every website on the internet needs to make money. But some are intended to do just that, and some uses for nostr are as well. The relays ate important, but they are not the end goal here.  

 I appreciate your lucidity, thank you.

If some creators intend their content to "make money" and they don't, then perhaps their content is not very good, but it is impossible for you to look at a "zap chart" and deduce what exactly is being zapped. 90% of my zaps go to memes that make me lol. I would happily zap devs who write code but to a retard like me, those things are incomprehensible and invisible, occurring in the backround and unseen. 

 Also, if someone wants to use nostr as an ad platform for selling wine for example, then zaps mean nothing as all the winemaker needs to do is direct traffic to his website and offer value for value there in the form of fiat or bitcoin.
I myself just muted a winemaker for over-advertising his product. It got tiresome. 

 BitBurn makes sense and what he says doesn't exclude what you wish to see Nostr turn into. Neitherof your points contradict other points.
The Nostr "brand" is add-free, no banning, no algos pushing addictive crap...
The zaps are a cool feature that needs to be further experimented with.
Instagram, tiktok is full of immoral individuals who gain followers with low iq content and then companies recruit them to shill shit. This can work here too but zaps play no part of it. X pays a share of ad revenue, which is outright impossible here unless ads are allowed, and again zaps play no role in that. Nostr is a whole new animal. 

 Thanks for asking these questions! The Residency and Accelerator programs are designed to allow Creators and Journalists to experiment with micropayments via Zaps. When we onboard Creators and Journalists we offer them the opportunity to also set up a wallet via Primal so they can receive Zaps (and send them!). Those that are not in NY state have taken us up on the offer if they do not already have a wallet set up. 

Based on what we’re seeing anecdotally - the minimum Zap amount is likely too low. 42 Sats is $0.007 in USD. It might be good to bump it to $0.10 or $0.25. 

Listening to some creators (many of whom are not in the Residency program) they observe that Nostr users are more likely to zap for “hot takes” or “memes” rather than original content. Today Zaps are treated a lot like a “like” in the UI and this might be one of the challenges. Are we asking people to Zap at the right point in time or is there a different point in time when it makes more sense to ask someone to Zap? 

The middle ground appears to be well curated feeds where people are sharing content from elsewhere with some commentary on why they are sharing. In these instances it is the curator who is receiving the Zaps rather than the original Creator. 

We would be curious to hear from folks about their thoughts on any of the above including @corndalorian ‘’ ’s question about alternative micropayment options. Predicting future behavior is always a challenge, but if someone is not zapping bc of lack of access to Bitcoin for example, that’s helpful information to have.  

 I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind wanting to implement payments at the right point in the UI/UX. It’s interesting to think that where in the app the payment occurs might affect how they’re treated. From my own observations/experience, I believe that showing zaps stats on individual posts actually causes people to zap good content less. It’s as if there’s a psychological threshold where people feel a particular post has “earned enough” instead of tipping based on their own personal enjoyment. There should still be a way to zap/tip button from a  post, but it should either be a profile zap and not shown on the post, or the zap stats should be viewable only by the person who published the post. 

As for other payment options, I’m curious others’ thoughts. I believe sats are superior due to the borderless/permissionless nature of bitcoin. However, Bitcoin adoption is not widespread, and some who have it don’t spend it for various reasons. It would be easier to market content from nostr to a non-nostr audience if fiat monetization options were available (PayPal, Venmo, cashapp, credit card, Apple/Google Pay, etc). Then once people use nostr they will naturally be exposed to zaps/Bitcoin and maybe see why it is preferable. But at least in the meantime, creators could have the maximum chance to capture value for what they’re producing.  

 That’s what I do. I’d like zap support, but the UX around an external wallet is messy and the cool way that primal does it with a custodial wallet hosted at strike is going to take a bunch of work to impliment plus has an ongoing monthly cost. 

And we know that Nos users in the creator residency / journalism accelerator want it, we set them up with a wallet via another nostr app, but we’re not sure beyond that how many people want it. 

We’ve got things we want to impliment first, like fixing memory leaks, making sure the content loads quickly, refactoring the data store to use SwiftData instead of just CoreData, the outbox model, working on making sure we retain more users who try Nos, displaying who’s newly following you, who liked your posts, who reposted, etc…. 

If somebody showed up and added displaying zaps we’d show it on your profile and notifications. If somebody provided a PR for NWC we’d also accept it. Lots of Nostr apps make zaps and wallet support central. Primal, which is a great app, markets itself as a bitcoin wallet first, and only secondarily as a nostr social media app. There are lots of good options for Nostr users to support zaps and lightning walllets.