Brainstorm: No Trust November \ stacker news ~meta

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7251 sats \ 19 comments \ @k00b 10 Dec meta

November has come and gone, but I'm beginning work on this experiment.

For anyone that wasn't deep in the threads where we teased this, we'll be running an experiment where trust isn't used in ranking anymore.

I promised to provide a venue for feedback before introducing this, so here it is.

history

When SN was started, we didn't have sybil resistance for our zaps. This forced us to introduce a web of trust ranking system. Not long after, we added sybil resistance to our zaps by sending 10% of any zap to the rewards pool. Today, 30% of any zap is sent to the rewards pool and territory founders.

hypothesis

This 30% sybil fee may be enough to make SN's ranking trustless, easier to comprehend, and funner to participate in.

what this means in terms of ranking

100 sats zapped from any stacker is equivalent to 100 sats zapped from anyone else
100 sats zapped from any stacker is equivalent to 1 sat zapped by 100 different people, or 2 sats zapped by 50 people, and so on
100 sats zapped from any stacker, and any number of stackers, is equivalent to 100 sats boost by the OP

more detail

boost behaves exactly like a zap of the same amount
- we'll remove the boost minimum, ie you can boost 1 sat or 10 or 1m and it affects ranking like one or many stackers zapped you that much
- top boosts can still be pinned, but pinning will only last a week rather than a month
meme monday will no longer have a bounty, but the meme with the most sats will still be included in the newsletter
100% of downzaps go to the rewards pool
- also, because downzaps have ~3x the provable sacrifice of a zap or boost of the same amount (ie downzaps send ~3x the amount to the rewards pool), they will have ~3x the effect on ranking
- something becomes outlawed when 0.3*(zap_sats+boost_sats) - downzap_sats <= -1000 sats
100% of rewards will go to top zappers of posts and comments, but rewards will still be distributed based on a WoT ranking system (the incentives of a trustless rewards pool is very tricky and this shouldn't influence the experiment too much anyway)

That's what is planned for the experiment currently. My suspicion is that our ranking algo is overindexed on trust currently and we'll either find out we don't need trust at all or learn that we need a lot less than we think.

If you'd be interested in seeing the above modified, speak now and forever hold your keys.

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121 sats \ 4 replies \ @SimpleStacker 10 Dec

so in addition to no trust, there will also be no log transformation?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Dec

Good question. We'll probably keep the log transformation but it'll apply something like as follows: log(0.3*(zap_sats+boost_sats) - downzap_sats).

The log transform won't be applied per zapper, but for the entire item.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Dec

The more I think about it, it might be worth removing the transform. It’s less transparent and discourages zaps on posts that have already earned a lot.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 10 Dec

That's a pretty interesting hypothesis. I can see it going both ways. With the log-transform, someone who really wants to boost the post and is sats-rich is incentivized to make larger zaps, since they need to in order to influence the rankings.

Similarly, with log-transform, sats-poor users are more incentivized to make small zaps on posts that already have a lot of zaps, since each unique user zapping is relatively more impactful.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Dec

The fear without the log transform is we end up with rich-rank or promotional-motive-rank. (I’m more afraid of the latter.)

The problem with the log transform is that we don’t know that unique zappers are actually unique (and need trust to make a better guess).

50 sats \ 4 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 10 Dec

I'm really curious to see how this experiment turns out. Right now I can only see one possible issue: in a place with very few ZAPS (not many users spending sats), it becomes pretty easy for bad-intentioned users to push their posts onto the front page. Maybe downzapping starts to make more sense in that case.

Could you explain that part a bit better?

also, because downzaps have ~3x the provable sacrifice of a zap or boost of the same amount (ie downzaps send ~3x the amount to the rewards pool), they will have ~3x the effect on ranking

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Dec

For a 100 sat zap, 30 sats goes to the rewards pool and territory founder.

For a 100 sat downzap, 100 sats goes to the rewards pool.

downzap proof-of-sacrifice / zap proof-of-sacrifice = 100 / 30 = ~3

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @supratic 10 Dec

Can we see downzaps the same way we see zaps at some point? Something like this?

Seeing the amount of sats near the post/comment is not accurate anymore, I suggest showing only the total amount of sats+ccs, both upzapped and downzapped.

What would be the issue in showing downzaps? WOuld this make the outlawed tag irrelevant?

We, as stackers, could decide to hide posts by

x

unzaps same way we currently do with min amount of sats.

Newbies could have a preset amount of

y

by default, but in control to change it if desired.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 10 Dec

I'll add downzaps to the item details. The other suggestions are good, and I'll keep them in mind, but I'm not sure they'll make it into the release.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @supratic 10 Dec

no rush, happy to hear it makes sense. If I were able to do it, I'd submit a pr myself.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 10 Dec

Trust has always been opaque to me.

This:

the relationship between sats contributed and a stacker's influence on item ranking is not linear, it's logarithmic: the effect a stacker's zap has on an item's ranking is trust*log10(total zap amount). This basically means that 10 sats equal 1 vote, 100 sats 2, 1000 sats 3, and so on ... all values in between and above 0 are valid as well.

And this:

The only consideration that factors into a stacker's trust level is whether or not they are zapping good content. Zap amounts do not impact stackers' trust scores.

from the faq are pretty clear, and yet I've struggled to keep them in mind.

It fells like no-trust will make things a little easier to think about.