The Rise & Fall of Stacker News - P2P V4V sats denominated social media platform

Stacker News- an experiment in enabling global use of Bitcoin as a payments protocol and self moderating and funding social media experience.
Bitcoin was created as a P2P payment protocol.
Its creator knew that to reveal his identity would be to imperil both him/herself and the protocol.
So it was created to be capable of operating without any founder or centralised owner.
It was and remains an experiment in whether you can operate a monetary system via an algorithm and blockchain in a decentralised manner.
Bitcoin treats all participants equally without fear or favour while being resistant to censorship.
This presented a real challenge to the fiat monetary system that dominates all MoE globally.
Most autocracies banned the use of Bitcoin as a MoE while the 'wests 'liberal democracies' imposed more subtle barriers to use short of an outright ban but relying more on subtle tax obligations which make lawful use of Bitcoin as a payment protocol effectively impractical...while allowing its use as a speculative commodity and the accumulation of more and more Bitcoin into speculative holding where it would not be used as a P2P payments protocol.
Today there are very few opportunities to use Bitcoin as a payment- a few businesses accept it - but very few and far between.
The idea of using Bitcoin for micropayments in V4V social media platform via a second level Lightning Network had been suggested and provided a potential use case where Bitcoin could be used regularly and often.
Stacker News was established to test this idea.
Central to the idea was that all posts and comments cost those making them while consumers of content can reward content providers with real money (BTC) payments made in appreciation for the content.
Spam would be minimised as it costs to post or comment anything.
Good content would be rewarded with real money while nonsense and trolling would not earn any reward.
This had the potential to show BTC in use on a global scale.
Stacker News started and was growing, attracting decent content providers and consumers.
But the state stepped in and threatened to prosecute the platform on the charge of custodying and transmitting funds.
At that point Stacker News opted for a compromise solution using an inhouse token known as Cowboy Credit and where participants could attach a Lightning Network wallet the option to still use Bitcoin.
This change introduced substantial complexity and entry barriers to new participants if they wanted to still use sats.
Many did attach LN wallets but some did not.
Many chose to only attach a receiving wallet so that others could zap their content and they would receive any sats sent, but they would not be sending sats if they made payments.
The whole model had always required enough content consumers with attached wallets paying real money into the system (or buying CCs with real money) for it ever hope to be a viable economic concern.
It never happened.
There were never enough people buying content with BTC/sats for the SNs economy to become self sustaining.
The shift to a hybrid model created too much friction and ambiguity for content consumers to join and fund the platform.
The introduction of CCs was a bit like the end of the gold standard- CCs were not real money- they were not Bitcoin- they could be used without limit by Stacker News but had no value outside of the platform.
Many content providers cynically only attached receiving wallets so they could still milk real money (sats) from other participants, but if they ever paid for posts, comments or zaps they would only be using CC shitcoins.
The Stacker News economy never reached exit velocity- it has been an interesting attempt to build a platform that could have provided all people globally with a place and use case to use Bitcoin every day.
But this opportunity for Bitcoin use as a P2P payments protocol of global reach looks to have been obstructed and killed by a combination of state pressure and human greed and selfishness.
Could such a model still succeed?
Yes quite probably.
There are Bitcoiners globally who would want to use Bitcoin in such a way.
How could it be improved?
The complexity and ambiguity introduced by having to use an inhouse token would ideally be avoided.
This might be achieved by operating from a jurisdiction where you will not be threatened or at risk from state bullying and prosecution. El Salvador maybe could host such a platform?
Or using using the model of attached wallets from the start- this (probably) avoids the risk of prosecution and avoids the debasement of the platform economy with inhouse shitcoins- but is leaves the problem of attracting enough participants to reach critical mass and sufficient quality of content and users who will pay real money (sats) for that content.
Stacker News may be dying, but it has been a worthwhile attempt.
Learnings can come from it and adopted to build a stronger more resilient platform.
The V4V model of sensorship does work- more or less, but like any model of governance is a question of balance. When a small group of participants can lobby for change to suit their agenda other members of a community are likely to become disillusioned.
Getting the right balance in the algorithm is a challenge yet to be solved.
It probably needs to evolve- and Stacker News has definitely been part of that evolution.
The systems for attaching LN wallets have been developed and do work.
Using them did support the LN liquidity and development - to the extent they were used by participants.
Now that Stacker News has officially conceded it is not primarily focused on achieving a sats saturated economy and removed the ability of participants to even know if other participants are operating on sats or CC shitcoins the end of the experiment is visible.
Freedom is never easily won.
But you can always keep trying!