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FAQ of today: Sats are so precious, so why zap others? Isn't it better to hodl?
1. To earn trust
Each stacker has a trust score on Stacker News. New accounts start without any trust, and over time stackers can earn trust by zapping good content and lose trust by zapping bad content.
The only consideration that factors into a stacker's trust level is whether or not they are zapping good content. The zap amount does not impact a stacker's trust.
High-trusted stackers process more power in voting, thus making the content they like more visible.
2. To earn rewards
As we all know, there is a daily reward from the SN pool, so during the zappers reward day, it rewards stackers who zapped one or more of the top 33% of posts and comments from the previous day.
  • zappers of top posts get 1/4 rewards
  • zappers of top comments get 1/4 rewards
3. To build relationships
If you zap others, others would zap you too; it's almost like sharing food, you pay one time, and friends pay the next round, so each got to enjoy more food:) Sharing is caring!
4. To vote for good content and show appreciation for creators.
Not gonna lie, it takes TIME to write good and original content! and the fact of just zapping few sats and getting to read a great piece of content instead of needing to deal with all the paywalls and subscriptions like in the fiat world is like a steal, but creators definitely need some support!

Sumup

Zapping others is mutually benefit, and generally the more you zap the more you earn. 🫑
Great write-up :)
However, regarding the trust scores: there isn't a single trust score per stacker. Trust scores are calculated between stackers.
If stacker A zaps what stacker B has zapped before, then B earned some trust from A (but not vice versa).
We do this to show everyone more of the content they like. If you use an inkognito tab, you should see that the items on the frontpage are ranked slightly different.
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there isn't a single trust score per stacker.
really, but I think each stacker have their own trust score, but then in posts and comments ranking wise, then it's calculated among stackers? πŸ‘€
I found these when I was writing for my new post - are they outdated?
zap_trust is your trust which is only earned by historically voting for things other stackers deem are good.
(sum((1/(ln(zap_order+e))*log(zap_amount)*relative_item_favorability*(ceiling(zap_trust*3)+1))/sum(numerator across all stackers).
(ln(zap_order+e)) - this term change means you'll still be rewarded more for zapping early, but no longer disqualifies you for rewards if you aren't super early.
log(zap_amount) - this term change means you'll still be rewarded more for zapping more, but no longer disqualifies you for rewards if you zap slightly less.
(ceiling(zap_trust*3)+1) - this term change means you'll still be rewarded more when trusted, but no longer disqualifies you for rewards if you are low trust or untrusted.
maybe @ekzyis could help us to decode it!
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really, but I think each stacker have their own trust score, but then in posts and comments ranking wise, then it's calculated among stackers?
Since gently personalized feeds, we use a matrix [0] so every stacker has a trust score from the PoV of another stacker. Before that, we all just saw content from the PoV of @k00b's account iirc.
I found these when I was writing for my new post - are they outdated?
Source? Is this from a comment from @k00b? Didn't find this formula in the FAQ.
However, I think it's good or at least very close [1]. The only "error" is maybe this:
zap_trust is your trust [from the PoV of another stacker] which is only earned by historically voting for things other stackers deem are good that stacker deems good.
Afaik, we didn't change the formula how content is ranked. Only how zap_trust is generated.
And I realized that what I wrote yesterday wasn't true:
I'm so bad when it comes to our own reward system. That's probably the part of the code base that I have the least experience with.
How you ranking works is the part of the code base that I have the least experience with. You always ask the best questions @Natalia! lol
When I have time, I'll look more into it today to give you an answer like here.
Also, thank you very much for writing these guides! They are very helpful, even for me who works at SN lol. SN is like an organism. It sometimes starts to do things even we, "the architects", didn't expect. And this is good and fun! SN lives from the community doing whatever it wants with SN. We just want to give you tools so you can do more awesome, weird, crazy stuff :)
And as you mentioned here:
Not gonna lie, it takes TIME to write good and original content!
It does take time. That's what I realized last time I wanted to write about ranking (but I guess I also took it way too seriously since I wanted to include the evolution of ranking, too).
And I think you are better at writing such guides than me. :)

[0] no, not that kind of matrix; this kind of matrix [1] code is the source of truth and I didn't check before writing this reply since else I might have disappeared for an hour or more.
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source: #98002 #222470
Since gently personalized feeds, we use a matrix [0] so every stacker has a trust score from the PoV of another stacker. Before that, we all just saw content from the PoV of @k00b's account iirc.
oh, interesting πŸ‘€
If stacker A zaps what stacker B has zapped before, then B earned some trust from A (but not vice versa).
so if you zap the good stuff before others, you keep earning trust this way?
Also, thank you very much for writing these guides! They are very helpful, even for me who works at SN lol. SN is like an organism. It sometimes starts to do things even we, "the architects", didn't expect.
Team @sn keep building cool things, I enjoying learning how to play with it. πŸš€
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21 sats \ 16 replies \ @ek 12 Jan
What do you see? :)
Maybe you can explain it to me and then I only have to correct a few things which is indeed a lot easier than me trying to explain everything lol
I call this the StackOverflow Effect
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I don't have time to watch anything :) It was for Natalia to see, not me :)
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damn, all the "cheat codes" are out there, and no one is reading them?!
πŸ˜‚
21 sats \ 12 replies \ @ek 12 Jan
Fair point!
@Natalia, how good is your SQL?
How earnings (used to) work: 1/3: top 21% posts over last 36 hours, scored on a relative basis 1/3: top 21% comments over last 36 hours, scored on a relative basis 1/3: top upvoters of top posts/comments, scored on: - their trust - how much they tipped - how early they upvoted it - how the post/comment scored
Now: 100% of earnings go to either top 33% of comments/posts or top 33% of upvoters
about this, I feel like it's still calculate over last 36 hours? I remember like there was one time, a post of mine got rewarded two days in a row. πŸ€”
the source of truth!
digging mode on.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 12 Jan
so if you zap the good stuff before others, you keep earning trust this way?
I think there is a ceiling at 0.9 but basically, yes.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 12 Jan
source: #98002 #222470
Yeah, those are still relevant but you missed the latest release affecting ranking (iirc) from October 2023:
most of us will see the same content but it'll be ranked to suit your zapping preferences ever so slightly
But not blaming you, our search is really bad. I am even surprised that you found those old release posts, lol
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But not blaming you, our search is really bad.
oh yes, much could be improved πŸ₯Έ
And I need to do the diggings for my new posts, so I've tried different ways to search things - with certain filters, it gets better.
The matrices are a very clever idea. This way we can have relative trust to other stackers. nice
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1000 sats \ 1 reply \ @Natalia 12 Jan
Welcome to our decoding SN SSL - Secret Source Live βš‘οΈπŸ˜‚
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πŸ˜‚
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Very interesting. It seems trust score is important. One day we may have to do proof of trust and save the trust scores in the Blockchain (as inscriptions or somethingπŸ˜…)
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That's very interesting.
If we implemented the trust score idea from these cowboy hat ideas, then we'd have different colored hats depending on who's looking at us.
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269 sats \ 1 reply \ @Natalia 12 Jan
indeed, but we don't really need the hat to tell us who do we trust? haha
I enjoy wearing no hat πŸ˜‚
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Yours would be so colorful, though!
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Great stuff!
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69 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 12 Jan
Proof of work for proof of work.
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