More and more often, I noticed is that not many stackers know how to send messages, or send messages together with a sats donation directly to other stackers. So here is the need to create yet another guide!

SN is a great platform, it has so many hidden easter eggs that you could not imagine, some are there on purpose, others are hidden just because not easily reachable. One of these is the hidden gem is powered by LNURL-pay implemented to send DMs.

SN does have this functionality, kinda hidden in the abysses of its wallet. You can access it from: @yourUsernameMenu > wallet > withdraw¹ > lightning address

or just clicking this link: https://stacker.news/wallet?type=lnaddr-withdraw

You'll then see this screen and enter a lightning address, for example supratic@stacker.news

Once you hit ⏎ Enter/Return key (or click outside the lightning address input field) a new set of inputs pop up!

You can use amount to send some sats to the lightning address just above. Note that the minimum here is already set to 1 sat, if you type zero there, not gonna work!

max fee you can set it to zero if you are sending to another stacker@stackeer.news user. Otherwise, make sure is more than 1 if you wish the message to be delivered.

Apart these two technical details, now we can see the attach² dropdown with various extra options. In the comment textarea, You can literally write whatever you want! ... with a maximum of 1000 characters.

The identifier is basically your@stacker.news lightning address, you can check it to let the receiver knew that message was from you, otherwise it will be sent anonymously. And if that's not enough, you can also add your name and real email address! Would you? Maybe in some cases is needed...

We can finally click the green [send] button and... that's the confirmation we get!

It works... I got it! Here is in the notification feed:

And here what I'll see, as receiver, when I click in the notification and expand sender information and sender comments:

It's definitely unintuitive UX and I bet it's different from all the cool UIs provided by the big messaging companies you are used to. No worries, I know this guide gonna be obsolete really soon, so I thought it will be nice to document the current state of hidden DMs on SN.

Hope you enjoy it, and look forward to receiving your private and/or anonymous messages soon!