This is essentially a follow up to Optimal Zapping on Stacker News, although the purpose is slightly different.
I'm still fascinated by the price discovery process in this space, where the purchasing power of our money fluctuates wildly and the payments for V4V services are voluntary. This has led me to spend a lot of time thinking about my podcast boosting behavior.
What I've decided on is setting my boost amount to 1% of my Fountain wallet balance and boosting whenever I feel like commenting on the podcast content. This has three dimensions of endogeneity that I like:
- The more engaging I find an episode, the more sats it gets.
- More interesting episodes get more discussion on nostr, since Fountain boosts are nostr notes. Hopefully, that draws more listeners to those episodes and earns those shows more support.
- The value I'm providing by making podcasts goes back out to those providing me value with their podcasts.
How do other people decide what amounts to zap and boost?
Btw, I resumed my optimal zapping algorithm on SN. Apologies for the smaller zaps, while the treasury builds back up.
I do a tier system
5k sats per episode for SN content
2k sats for bitcoin opTech
Always stream sats when I can.
200 sat boost when I want to comment.
It’s always cool when non bitcoin pods have v4v on but that is very rare.
I almost only listen to podcasts by people who at least have SN accounts anymore. I found that to be a nice filter to limit my listening.
That was the filter I used before but now I'm only wanting to support podcasts that really engage with our community of fringe internet weirdos.
What determines the "Fountain wallet balance"?
Ie, what's 1%, and what makes that fluctuate over time?
Mostly podcast revenue, since Fountain promos don’t seem to work anymore, and podcast boosting.
Fountain pays you/and payments in sats, or what? (Just boosts yourself?)
Our listeners pay us in sats. Fountain just provides the platform for it.
That's what I'm trying to ask... I doubt there's much/many sats coming in that way?
So 1% of balance per zap/nice convo you encounter means a progressively smaller and dwindling amount, no?
No. It's actually growing right now, but that's irrelevant. Since it's a proportion, eventually it will stabilize at a non-zero equilibrium.
I blindly zap stacker sports pod 100 each episode before I even listen
Edit: if I don’t, it’s just because I forgot due to being a human lol
Much appreciated. Try spicing it up with a hot take next time.
I’ll try
how price discovery when information is free?
People are choosing to pay for it still and they're doing some sort of calculation to come up with an amount.
information is duplicated not consumed
there's no 'market price' to depress or inflate
prices are a market coordination mechanism
philanthropy is a resource allocation decision
It's a form of tipping, which has had price discovery through community norms. I'm curious about how those norms are developing in this space.
If you don't like calling it price discovery, I won't make you.
Rational incentive for tipping includes signaling to the producer "I like this" and "Keep making this". Things that more people like will on average get tipped more. So there is some information content to the tip amounts, akin to price discovery
Some podcasts, Local Bitcoiners comes to mind, have various rewards for their supporters. That's a much more tangible kind of price discovery, basically an all-pay auction.
I always zap the same amounts. Sometimes I will add a second zap on Chris’ pod if I want to make a comment.
the 1% rule makes sense as long as the boost actually lands. i stopped tuning the number after my wallet kept silently dropping boosts on keysend addresses it couldn't pay, hosts never knew i sent anything. a bare lnaddress in the feed and any wallet pays it, done. now i boost a flat amount and just check the payment went through