Oddbean new post about login | logout I have wondered about Nos’s roadmap for payments, and whether that will be zaps or something else. Especially with the creator residency, payments/monetization options seems crucial. I love zaps and wish that everyone used them and tipped with them, but I also know that bitcoin adoption is an ongoing and slow process. I wonder if offering additional options such as Cashapp, Venmo, etc. would be feasible. It would open up more options for creators to receive tips. Not sure what that would entail though from their side.
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.