New way to earn Sats \ stacker news ~bitcoin

4149 sats \ 116 comments \ @chris42 29 Mar 2023 bitcoin

I'm building a sort of lightning faucet where users vote for content and receive sats as rewards. The idea is to go from a no-coiner to your first sat(held in your own wallet) in under a minute.

Here is a super early mvp, https://litstak.com

PS: I'm looking for feedback, reply if you would be interested in doing so. I'll send 1k sats to the first 100 people :)

view all related items

1050 sats \ 5 replies \ @davidw 29 Mar 2023

Love the site.

A lot of need for this type of stuff for prototyping or for getting iteration of designs in tech world. Companies pay a decent amount to gauge sentiment from potential customers.

See this being like Dribbble but with an actual use case - not just a gloryhole of ‘design porn’.

Particularly valuable if you can have companies ask screening questions to ensure they’re getting responses from their target market.

Great job on the build. How long did it take you Chris?

50 sats \ 4 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

I like the screening questions idea, I think they could also double as captchas and spam protection. Thanks for the idea!

Thanks, I started coding in late Dec during the xmas vacation. It's been on and off but all the nice comments have convinced me to persevere. Tbh the coding and the integration with lightning was fairly easy. Most of the work now is UI/UX/Growth which isn't my forte

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 29 Mar 2023

Glad the screening questions could work for you. You could even offer something like a bunch of sats on sign-up or a sliding scale for completing each Q. Since the value of your users grows if you’re able to segment them further.

I know that goes against the vibe of bitcoiners, but general age bands, interests, locations etc is not too intrusive and should help you scale the product and make it far more commercially valuable imho.

As a company/creative you will also certainly want to select all the variations the user sees, not be randomly compared against other entries. Especially if you can accommodate more than 2 variations.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll come up with a few more avenues. Congrats again, keep us updated

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @davidw 29 Mar 2023

Well happy to jump on a call one day and see if can help.

My background is product, UX as well as dabbling in design and code from time to time. Whilst I’m sure you’d love to have a proper designer join… I am sure it’d still be worth your time. Hopefully can help you spend more of the time building the parts you love.

Set up an LNCal if you like or Calendly and I’ll be sure to book myself in. As will others keen to lend a hand I imagine 😉

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

awesome, could defo use the help although a call may be tricky right now due to timezones:

LNCal Calendly

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 31 Mar 2023

All booked in. Looking forward to hearing more about the motivations behind the project

1030 sats \ 1 reply \ @joda 29 Mar 2023 freebie

Wonderful! Love it! Would prefer both contestants to fit on screen so no scrolling, and user option of placement of the vote icon (right side might be better for right-handers). Or, even better, allow clicking on the image itself rather than having a separate button.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

ah good idea, thanks for the UX tips, added to my todo list

1244 sats \ 4 replies \ @poe7645 29 Mar 2023

Well I just withdrew 25 sats via a generated invoice for a couple minutes of clicking a lightning button on some Putin and Biden embracing each other and riding bikes pictures. So that's cool.

It was super slick and easy start to finish. Not sure I deserved them but that was pretty flawless for ease of use.

I like it!

25 sats \ 3 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

thanks, glad midjourney showed you some funny stuff!

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @poe7645 29 Mar 2023

I'm going to keep playing with this, maybe get a post up. Really great idea with the post rewards being pitted against another. Gives a random but accessible incentive to play around and potentially earn sats, but lose nothing but the post fee of a few sats.

And if you get voted out so be it. No real harm. Curious to see if this model can be used for other things as well.

Either way thanks a bunch for the sats here and working on cool stuff like this! Keep up the good work.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @xanny 29 Mar 2023

It's very addictive the way it's designed too!

I made a couple posts myself, not sure when they will show up on the site, mainly did it to add to the content since I saw the same images coming up multiple times.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

ah thanks! ye the content is a bit repetitive right now but hopefully can convince people to post their stuff :)

1103 sats \ 5 replies \ @ChadHardbody 29 Mar 2023

Very cool. Straightforward, it took a moment to realize the bolt was an actual vote. But understand based on the messaging here. On site that message can improve.

Very cool idea, almost like an early stage MVP of a reddit of sorts. Keep up the great work.

50 sats \ 4 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

thanks for the kind comment, building can be long and tedious journey! Ye, I really need to improve the messaging along with UI/UX of the overall site. Looking for help if anyone is interested in collaborating :)

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @ChadHardbody 30 Mar 2023

Would be happy to assist.

Reach out on nostr?

npub1mhh3947vkedssgzwxzfadzhs74kr09zvgpuspc0ucakzwz492crq4rprsc

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

Kool reached out, my nostr: npub1tj92u03qz0c56d9z6rf98ufadj8365kaa96ufy9ytunfsah9459q2ratst

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @davidw 29 Mar 2023

Would love to give you a hand. Impressive what you’ve built

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

sweet, you can reach out on @Cwispyyyy or shoot an email to hello@litstak.com

1093 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 29 Mar 2023

I wasn't sure until the first thing I saw was the Zappa artwork! I'll give it a try

234 sats \ 2 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

OP here, let me know if withdrawals don't work to your node. My node isn't well connect yet, 02a2cd39429354378d4ee7d239a4396a10844938e16bdc5a3d27b24c49de922b4c

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Wumbo 29 Mar 2023

Withdraw did not work for me.

Good job on everything else.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

ah sorry about that, what wallet are you using? Are you running you own lightning node? If so, whats the node key?

1020 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullama 30 Mar 2023

This is great, I really liked it.

I would suggest you don't show photos that have been already seen before.

I can see myself clicking on my favorite photos for a while, great way to see art and earn some sats on the side.

Thanks for making this.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

thanks for the feedback, I keep track of already seen links so it should show you new stuff, probably a bug somewhere though :D

1020 sats \ 2 replies \ @nym 29 Mar 2023

Nice website. Would be nice if there was an image upload option also.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

thanks, you can post an image link. I might add some kind of imgur integration so you can upload your local images. Appreciate the feature request

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 29 Mar 2023

Cool! Would also be nice to be able to top up your own wallet, instead of withdraw only. Define wallet limits if there are any.

1011 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 29 Mar 2023

I'm not sure about mobile, but on desktop I would rather see the images side by side.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

ah yes good idea, I will show them side by side when using a big screen to avoid scrolling. Thanks again

1010 sats \ 0 replies \ @Gian 29 Mar 2023

Very cool, very simple to use, for pics upload you can ask some sats after login, just for avoid spam...

1010 sats \ 4 replies \ @tomlaies 29 Mar 2023

What exactly is a "round" of voting? Is there something like e.g. an epoch that takes a week and the winners get into round 2?

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

Posts get sent to a massive queue. Two posts are randomly picked, the loser is removed from the queue and the winner stays in the queue and may get randomly picked again. A single post could could be in 1000s of rounds/votes per minute.

It costs 4sats to post and you get +2sats for every win. If your post won a 2000 times, you will have made 4000sats, 1000x!

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @tomlaies 29 Mar 2023

Oh but that means if my post looses its first match it's out forever and only ever seen by 1 person?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

yep your post could be amazing but unlucky and lose its first match.

What if I added the option to put 10 of them in the queue?

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @tomlaies 29 Mar 2023

Unsure, there might be several ideas how to address it. Might be worth sleeping a night over it.

You might need an adaptive algorithm that ensures the queue not becoming infinitely long or empty as well .

Idk, you'll figure it out ;)

1010 sats \ 0 replies \ @chungkingexpress 29 Mar 2023

Looks great!

1010 sats \ 0 replies \ @zuspotirko 29 Mar 2023

lmfao at the guy whos first idea was to upload a bunch of selfies :D

1010 sats \ 2 replies \ @tomlaies 29 Mar 2023

Created my first post 😎😎😎

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

Thanks Tom! I like the bitcoin theme ;)

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @tomlaies 29 Mar 2023

Finally a use for my mindless playing around with image gen that produces 1 cool thing per month

1010 sats \ 3 replies \ @kenn_b 29 Mar 2023

Quite easy to use. Well done.

I made a post, but then could no longer find it.

I guess, you will need to build some major scam protection into this.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

Thanks for posting, the site is a bit wonky right now but I'll find your post and add it.

In terms of scam protection, I think I'll have a TOS which wont allow anything illegal but apart from that, I'll let users decide on content with their votes

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kenn_b 29 Mar 2023

In terms of the scam/spam i meant it more that a robot does not go clicking your vote buttons etc.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

ah ye, I'll have to add some kind of captcha system

1010 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 29 Mar 2023

You probably want to add a couple sentences explaining how it works. It wasn't clear to me right away what I was doing.

The page crashed once while I was voting.

Otherwise, I can see a lot of potential value from users on both sides of this site. It seems like the kind of thing that can help people do some quick market research on their design options.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

Yep defo need a more user friendly explanation or run through of the site. It's top of my priority list. Apologies for the crash, didn't think that many people would go on it, thanks stacker.news!

The market research angle is interesting, I'll add that as a feature :)

1010 sats \ 1 reply \ @mo 29 Mar 2023

Not sure about the voting, but I believe it could be interesting to create polls and reward the participants. Maybe the creator can actually define more settings and how much reward to provide to responders? Just ideas…

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

thanks, really appreciate ideas! I think polls could defo be fun and engaging way for users to stack!

1010 sats \ 1 reply \ @cecil 29 Mar 2023

nice, a simple immediate stacking option.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

thanks, really aiming to convert as many no-coiners as possible

1010 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheL0wner 29 Mar 2023

worked for me withdrew 10 sats just as a small test. curious as to how the site decides which posts to compare for voting.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

watching people withdraw sats is very satisfying. Currently posts are randomly pitted against each other.

1010 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 29 Mar 2023

Pretty cool! It looks like each topic shows me two items and I pick one (vote on it).

Curious about the win-loss thing. If your post loses, does that mean it stops showing up on the site?

I selected the stacker news topic and voted for several rounds, and then the lightning symbol vanished, but two SN posts were still showing up. Does this mean you can only vote a certain number of times for each topic (or did I just exhaust all the SN posts you had loaded up?)

I like that you're looking for ways to get nocoiners onboarded. It's interesting to think about incentives here. As a nocoiner, I can come to get some easy sats by liking posts (super easy to start, no friction). As a poster, I can link to content so that people will discover it. I could see a symbiosis for people who write guides to link to their content. I got to think more on this, but great job!

143 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

Thanks for comment and promise of thoughts :D

Yep, so posts are pitted against each other and the winner stays on for more voting and the loser is removed. You can think of it like a big random queue of posts being voted on. You can post the same thing thounsands of time, I feel the incentives are fine as you are paying to post.

There's some rate limiting but the site has also crashed a few times already :D Didn't expect so many people!

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @02db2213a7 2 Apr 2023

Second day in a row I'm getting a message that the wallet is drained and therefore I cannot withdraw my sats :(

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 2 Apr 2023

Apologies, it should be back up now :)

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryptocoin 2 Apr 2023

Where are the sats coming from?

So I submit a cat pic, and pay 4 sats. It shows up in an upcoming duo, and if mine gets upvoted, I get 2 sats back and make it to the next round. If mine loses it gets nothing.

And then never appears again?

If that is the case, you earn 1 sat per match (except for the very first match per category, in which you earn 5 sats).

Or does my entry continue to appear in subsequent matches without me paying each time to appear?

The economics of this don't make sense to me if my entry does re-appear.

25 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 2 Apr 2023

So right now 2 posts are voted against each other. Each post cost 4sats to enter the round of voting. This gives us 8 sats in the pot. The user votes and receives 1 sat, leaving 7. The winner is auto entered into the next round of voting, which cost 4. There's now 3 sats left, the winner gets 2 and 1 is distributed to users of the site.

Each win nets you 2sats, if you win 100 times then your 4sats would return you 200sats.

I'm thinking of adding a sort of double up feature. As your post wins, it automatically reposts itself. Imagine posting something and it would keep doubling up, so after 20 "rounds" your 4sats has returned 100ksats! What do you think of this? I'm struggling with the messaging. I figure this would incentive users to post and make it fun

1000 sats \ 3 replies \ @affected 1 Apr 2023

The withdrawal QR code doesn't render properly in Firefox (where stackernews' does):

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @chris42 OP 1 Apr 2023

Thanks for the feedback, mmm I'm using Firefox and it seems work. Could you send me more details over telegram, https://t.me/litstak ? What os, is there anything in the console? Etc

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @affected 2 Apr 2023

Thanks for the hint with the console: And searching for the error message leads to Blocked from extracting canvas data because no user input was detected..

And, alas, I had set privacy.resistFingerprinting to true in about::config. Resetting it fixed the issue.

SN's QR generation doesn't trigger this, that's why I assumed the problem was on your end. My bad, and have a nice day!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 2 Apr 2023

Ah thanks for the detailed bug report. I'll have a go at fixing that

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @criptopanas 1 Apr 2023

Its great, also signing in with Alby make a lot easier!

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @affected 1 Apr 2023

Excellent concept, there's something irresistable about clicking for sats.

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @alevu 31 Mar 2023

Really cool concept, I get a invalid bolt11: Bad bech32 string when scanning the withdrawal link, but otherwise really nice idea ! EDIT: Nevermind, tried with Alby instead of Zeus, and Alby could successfully withdraw the sats.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

Ah ye I need to fix it for Zeus, maybe it doesn't recognise the lnurl. Thanks for not giving up and trying with Alby, enjoy the sats

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @ladyluck 31 Mar 2023

Why don't the user's name appear with the post and can there a section for comments or reactions.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

That's a good idea, I think letting people see posters will be good. I might change the bolt symbol to reactions, thanks for the feedback

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 31 Mar 2023

Pretty cool. Just did 50 votes.

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @fred 31 Mar 2023

The User interface is poor, as a UI Designer, I can collaborate with you and work out an optimal one.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

Awesome, would love help with the UI, links in my bio

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @joyepzion 31 Mar 2023

Can you make it such that we can all see the votes each post makes

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

Thanks for the feature request, added to my to-do list :)

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @leafophonist 31 Mar 2023

That was fun. :) I got three sats for looking at A.I images - It lifted my mood a bit.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

I'm happy it made your day slightly better. Keep stacking :)

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @And1 31 Mar 2023

That's a cool idea! However, I did not realize that you can choose between two things. Withdraws didn't work for me either, but that should be easily fixed when your node is better connected.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

thanks! Initially I had it as vote instead of a ⚡ but it looked a bit boring. Ohh its a shame the withdrawal didnt work, mind sharing your node key so I can debug?

1000 sats \ 2 replies \ @playbuttonscore 31 Mar 2023

This will be the faucet of this decade mate, it's the easiest and the best thing. I earned 10 Sats in Minutes. So things needs to be fixed like mate, the UI and many times the webpage isn't working. Serval times I am using the faucet and the whole chrome shuts down. But no problem 👌. Yeah , some polishing and the Faucet will right.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

thanks buddy, ye the UI is pretty basic. Im not very artistic! Appreciate you trying it out and thanks for the bug reports

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @playbuttonscore 31 Mar 2023

It's my duty as a human to help the ones who are here to bring a change!!

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @lunanto 31 Mar 2023

It's a good one, I just withdrew 33 sats from browsing anonymously. Is there a cap to how many votes/sats users can make in a day?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

thanks, right now its 50 votes as still testing. Hoping to eventually uncap that

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @Entrep 31 Mar 2023

You mean, I just click the lightning button and I earn sats

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

free money, wooo 🤑

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 31 Mar 2023

Loading indicators for the gifs in the funny cat option would be good. You also might want to implement some kind of bot prevention so people can’t write a script and just get a ton of sats instantly

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 31 Mar 2023

good idea, added to the features list. Yep, planning on adding some captchas about the content too

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 31 Mar 2023

Pretty cool. Mission accomplished: I voted and withdrew within a minute. I look forward to more updates!

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @ugochukwubreakthrough1 30 Mar 2023

Wow it's really amazing just withdraw 40 SATs after viewing post ☺️🤙⚡ it's cool good job

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

Thanks for the enthusiasm, it's contagious ☺️

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @_stacktoshi 30 Mar 2023

Really simple to use for us SN users, but there needs to be a lot more hand-holding for no-coiners. I'm not sure what happened to my first post and there's no other posts to test zapping on.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

ye it's geared to SN users currently, I did the mum test and there was a lot of confused looks. Currently I'm happy to have a bit of a niche as you guys are awsome and I don't need to convince you bitcoin is worthwhile!

apologies, I went to bed and woke up to the site broken, I appreciate all the people finding bugs in it :D. I'm gona work on fixing those and getting everyones posts up, thanks for posting!

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scroogey 30 Mar 2023

One tiny nitpick: if I gather a couple of sats anonymously (without login), and THEN login with lightning, the sats vanish to zero. I expected them to carry over somehow.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

ah ye didn't think about that, thanks! I'll fix that in the next release

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @encycloboys 30 Mar 2023

Mate, it's a awestruck idea and the execution is on the way but yeah the UI is no that attractive(I understand it's the early stage!) But yeah the Mid journey and all seriously impressed me and my friends. Awesome

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

thanks for showing your friends! Ye UI isn't one of my skills, hopefully can partner up with someone more artistic!

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @0fje0 30 Mar 2023

Quite impressive. And surprisingly useful...

I was busy (offline) preparing a SN post asking for information about e-books & lightning and your faucet took me directly to a relevant bird-site thread!

How did you do that? /s

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

satoshi told me :D

1000 sats \ 0 replies \ @jpz 30 Mar 2023

It is a very entertaining site.

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @shibe 30 Mar 2023

Site won't open for me, just shows a "connection refused". Not sure how I can help debug this

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

Oops, went out for a beer. It's back up now

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bitman 29 Mar 2023

That's great! There's not enough faucets around - and to be super fun too. Great. Where I am right now has a super slow connection, and this is doubly impaired by my VPN; therefore, I often saw the buttons before the images. Many other countries at the fore front and need for Bitcoin adoption will undoubtedly be far slower than me. But it still seems very workable.

Well done. Really nice project - keep it going.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 30 Mar 2023

thanks, ye the pictures arent great for those on slow internet speeds. There's always the links but most people find those boring.

I've been meaning to add some logic to show the vote button once the image has loaded, just haven't got round to it yet

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 29 Mar 2023

Fun & fuss-free experience! Zapped 11 times and withdrew to my Muun wallet. TIL that you could successfully withdraw such small amounts of sats! Then zapped 7 more times and spent 4 sats to post my article on Litstak. Worked flawlessly.

I do agree that the whole notion of voting has to be explained more clearly, probably in the FAQ. Also, an explanation of why the name Litstak will go far to cement brand identity and make your effort salient in your users’ minds.

Bookmarked your site!

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

Thanks for trying it out. Sure lightning has some difficulties but I'm always amazed it work! So far over 90 withdrawals have taken place, just amazing that magic internet money was beamed to some random internet users. Happy to have shared some sats

1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @random_ 29 Mar 2023

Cool site! I like that there are different topics to select from. Do you have any plans for the vote results?

Since users can vote for free and post without making accounts, couldn't they game the reward system you have?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

I think vote results will be useful data which I haven't given much thought to yet. Right now I'm leaning to make the data publicly visible in some way

Yep users can game the system but I aim to introduce captchas to detect bots and rate limit voting. I think the cost of generating fresh ip addresses will outweigh the sats earned

1000 sats \ 2 replies \ @xanny 29 Mar 2023

Love it, excellent idea and the site is fast, successfully withdrew sats using Zap.

One bug report and one UX suggestion:

Zeus didn't work when scanning the QR code, the error is: "decodeError Invalid bolt11: bad bach32 string."

As I said though, using Zap it scans perfectly fine.

For the UX, make it clearer we are voting between two choices. I didn't realise that at first. If the two options were side-by-side it would be much more obvious straight away.

Keep on building man!

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @chris42 OP 29 Mar 2023

ye I can see some wallets where failing but didn't know which. I'll investigate Zeus.

yep I plan on rejigging the UI and putting choices next to each other seems to be the consensus.

Thanks for the feedback and kind comment, lots of positivity which is great after spending time working on something.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @xanny 29 Mar 2023

Very welcome man. Positivity is well deserved, you built something great. Gonna send this to a friend I recently onboarded to LN too!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @watchmancbiz 12 Mar

Wow, would love have tried this, but looks like your site has been taken down.What's the status?