The first round of our Million Sat Madness experiment came to an end last night (with 4.5 million sats rewarded to our top 64 stackers), and today we're starting another round with a few modifications.
To understand why, let's first reflect on some of the results from March:
The Good
- The number of stackers earning for their posts and comments hit all-time highs (up 13% and 11% respectively in March)
- The number of stackers spending sats hit an all-time high (up 4% in March)
- The number of items created hit an all-time high (up 23% in March)
- The number of comments/post hit an all-time high (up 29% in March)
- The number of zaps hit an all-time high (up 26% in March)
- We had our second biggest month of sats spent on zaps (up 25% in March)
Across the site, most of our important metrics either hit all-time highs, or saw sequential monthly improvements during March, even adjusting for the two extra days vs. February.
The Bad
One metric which remained flat in March is the number of new stackers signing up to SN. We have a few experiments planned to target this specifically, which we hope will incentivize more signups and help stackers earn more for their referrals.
Looking Forward
In April, we are making two notable changes to Million Sat Madness.
First, the top 100 contributors will earn Million Sat Madness rewards.
One fun element of Million Sat Madness is the competition and satisfaction of watching your profile rise up the leaderboard. While this is fun for the top participants, most stackers will entirely miss out on the experience if the leaderboard is too restrictive.
We think expanding Million Sat Madness to 100 stackers strikes a better balance of fun and competition for stackers.
Second, the Million Sat Madness rewards curve will be less top-heavy. First place will now earn a flat 1 million sats (first place earned 1.6 million sats in March), and every other position will get a percentage of the remaining rewards pool.
If the rewards pool in April is as large as it was in March, positions 1-3 will earn less, while positions 4-100 will earn more. Position 100 would even earn more than position 64 did in March.
One of our goals with Million Sat Madness was to help the top 100 SN contributors earn more rewards than they were prior to Million Sat Madness, and two tailwinds make this possible:
- Limiting the total number of reward recipients to 100 stackers
- Eliminating the SN team from Million Sat Madness
The total size of the rewards pool is roughly consistent, so with an improved rewards curve, the top 100 stackers should earn more rewards than they did under the previous daily rewards system.
Finally, Bitcoin++ will be the title sponsor of Million Sat Madness in April, and we plan on offering this sponsorship opportunity to companies across the Bitcoin ecosystem in future months.
Stacker News is quickly becoming the internet's home for Bitcoin content, and we believe an exclusive sponsorship placement can be both an incredible value for brands, while also contributing to the sustainability of Stacker News rewards.
One Final Note
The Stacker News team has been closely monitoring feedback and data from Million Sat Madness, and has been debating the right approach to rewards both internally and on SN.
While we decided to try another month in April, we also realized that the job of structuring a rewards system may be a task individual territory owners are better equipped to determine over time.
Just like territory owners have the ability to customize fees and post types, we plan to give territory owners more economic levers to experiment with (like rewards structure) over time.
total stackedfield for each stacker on the leaderboard because it looks like it currently shows total stacked including rewards. This might lead to the assumption that rewards are included as a factor in zaprank.Hardly 1 minute before