Stacker News: Earn Bitcoin for Your Content
Stacker News @sn is an open-source discussion forum and news aggregation platform where you can earn bitcoin for creating and curating content.
How does Stacker News work and what features does it have?
Value-for-Value for Content
Stacker News is a bit like Reddit, Quora or Hacker News, but instead of earning likes, upvotes or points that are not redeemable or transferable on other platforms, you earn bitcoin.
Stacker News is an example of "value-for-value" model, where creators don't hide content behind paywalls, subscriptions or advertising.
If users like content, they tip sats (small parts of bitcoin) to the creator.
Tipped sats are a bit like a measurement of positive energy!
Micro-Payments Incentivize Quality Content
Stacker News has various territories to categorize content.
Posting content generally costs 100 sats and commenting on a post costs 1 sat (this may vary depending on the territory).
Charging users for posting content reduces spam and incentivizes creating quality content.
Every new user can post and comment for free (with limited visibility) while they earn their first few sats.
Users who post engaging content also earn from the daily pool of rewards which come from Stacker News's posting/commenting revenue.
How Does It Work?
There are multiple ways to sign up to Stacker News.
The most private and recommended way is Lightning, but you can have multiple sign-up methods on a single account.
When setting up an account, you will get an automatically generated username, but you can change it.
Your bio text will be your first free post, so best to put some proof of work to it, so you're more likely to earn some welcome sats to get started (I have to admit that I was a bit lazy with my bio though..).
Even if you don't get enough welcome sats, you can always fund your account with a Lightning invoice (same goes for withdrawal).
You can also attach a self-custodial Lightning wallet to supplement the custodial Stacker News wallet.
Before posting, you can choose in which territory you want your post to appear.
You can also choose between various post types (link, discussion, poll, bounty, job listing), and format your text to be visually more appealing.
You can forward sats to content collaborators, or pay credit to the original creator of the content.
If you want greater visibility for your content, you can boost it with sats upon creation.
To zap content, just click the small Lightning icon on the left.
You can change your default zap amount in the settings.
By long-pressing on the Lightning icon, you can specify a custom zap amount.
There is an option to subscribe to a user's posts or comments and get a notification whenever they post.
You can also mute users whose posts and comments you don't want to see.
If you want, you can also crosspost to Nostr.
Anyone can start a Stacker News territory.
Starting a territory costs either 100K sats/month, 1M sats/year, or 3M sats as one-time payment.
Territory owners earn 50% of the fees generated in their territory.
Web of Trust Ranking Algorithm
Stacker News uses bitcoin to rank content on the website.
More sats from more trusted users means more people will see the content.
Generally, you can increase your reputation by zapping and creating quality content.
Conversely, by zapping bad-quality content, your trust score goes down and your zapping behavior on Stacker News becomes less influential.
The lightning bolt next to a post or comment is a tool for users to signal that they like what they read.
If you see content you don't like, you can downzap it, which also affects the post's ranking.
Generally, the higher your trust score, the more sats you can earn!
How to Stack Sats on Stacker News?
How to get started on Stacker News?
Focus on adding value, whether it's through writing articles, prompting discussions or only curating links.
If you earn sats from your contributions, consider it as a good signal that other users enjoy what you're sharing.
Tip: if you zap or comment early on posts that become "good-quality", you will earn more!
If your posts get ignored, consider it as a signal that other users don't enjoy reading your content.
Generally speaking, referral links or repetitive content (and probably also AI-generated content) gets ignored on Stacker News, so be careful with those.
When Stacker News first started a few years ago, the discussion was almost solely about Bitcoin.
Now with the launch of territories anyone can start a thriving community to discuss any topic.
How many sats can you stack on Stacker News then?
Well, I doubt you can make a living (yet), but if you put some effort on your posts, you can easily earn some lunch money or pay your electricity bill etc.
For people living in e.g. Africa or South Asia, even curating content on Stacker News could provide some side income.
Instead of stacking sats and making money, the main point of Stacker News is to learn from others in a social way and to have fun.
Sats are a bonus!
Stacker News has a referral program that pays you for every new user you refer:
✅ 2.1% of all the sats they earn for their content
✅ 21% of all the sats they spend on boosts or job listings
downzapwas a thing....