👍🏻 None of this excludes zaps. Similar to saying “only retweets instead of likes,” they are just both options to show support or agreement. 

The problem is not everyone has easy access to zapping, and this would necessarily be true for people just arriving to #Nostr and trying it out.

To the contrary, what we want is for everyone to be zapping, and giving them good engagement info for what they expect is exactly how you get them excited to stay and take the time and energy it takes to learn and use the tools for bitcoin and lightning. If their initial experience feels shallow and unrewarding, they won’t do homework to make it better, they will just be disappointed.

IMO, it’s like asking them to climb a ladder and then knocking of the first 5 rings. Zaps are the goal, but there is no safe, one click, instant, no learning necessary way to onboard to zaps, so you have to give them rungs to climb. 

 Rungs to climb - I like that mental image.  So the bottom rung is a “👍🏻” but how do we progress to a proper “⚡️”?

Are likes a gateway drug for zaps?  No.  They are opposing forces.

UNLESS… we give people a “like balance” and make it a scarce commodity.  When you’re new to nostr you get 50 likes and once you use them all, you have to earn more 🤣 Once you’re out you can only like a post when someone likes your post.

We need ThumbCoin and a proper blockchain to track this new asset class.