I got tagged in discussion about the origin of zaps by @dk. It reminded me of all the instances of zaps that I was made aware of after starting SN.
The earliest instance, as far as I know, dates back to 2011 with a site called WitCoin which used custodial onchain bitcoin for zaps and fees. I learned about it from this comment by @cointastical:
Did you know?Long before Stacker.News, there was Witcoin. Back when BTC/USD was under $1.Witcoin UI was pretty basic, but along the same lines as SN (pay in BTC to post, to comment, to upvote, etc, and the OP got most of the payment for upvotes and comments, and the site got its cut).tl;dr: Custodial wallet. Eventually abandoned and outstanding balances rugged.