SN release: drop territory costs, bug fixes \ stacker news ~meta

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SN release: drop territory costs, bug fixes

3231 sats \ 51 comments \ @k00b 17h meta

territory costs

We've dropped to territory costs to 50k sats/month and 500k sats/year. The "once" option will remain at 3m for now. We're debating removing it or making it prohibitively expensive in the future, but for now it will stay the same.

Any active territory founders on a monthly or yearly billing cycle were refunded the difference of what they paid for the rest of their billing period and the new price of the billing period.

other stuff

ek and I have been re-nerfed in rewards. We're still competitive, but we have to work harder at it. We'll see how it goes and nerf us harder if we need to (or just nerf me harder as I tend to zap like crazy).

There were some smaller bug fixes in here too.

We have a lot of awesome stuff pending review, including bolt12 receives/withdrawals. Hopefully we'll get those released soon.

Merry Christmas!

View all commits here: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/commits/master/

Since starting the Open Source Contributor Award Rules (OSCARs), we've paid a total of 13.9m sats to 39 contributors for 163 contributions! View an up to date list of contribution awards here: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/blob/master/awards.csv

Previous release: #814634

We are hiring.

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18 sats \ 0 replies \ @realBitcoinDog 1h

At 50k sats/mo you got me re-tempted again to found my own!!

211 sats \ 5 replies \ @ek 17h

We also discussed a little bit to add a weekly plan and not have any discounts between plans, so a month would cost as much as 4 weeks and a year would cost as much as 12 months. These options would then just exist for your convenience.

The idea was that the discounts were meant to incentivize long-term thinking founders but it seemed to have the negative effect: territories on more regular bills are better maintained than territories bought outright (also the reason we're debating removing once). Removing the discounts would also make it mentally easier to start a territory for a week and see how it goes. You're not punished for not knowing immediately if it will work out or not. I think there are many cool ideas for territories but having to pay and commit to a territory idea for at least a whole month is maybe too risky.

But we already have too many territories so we want to see some churn first before we add an option for even more territories or have a better interface to discover territories.

136 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 11h

To me, the only real option is to pay for lifetime because rent-seeking each month or year only drives up costs over time.

I agree that a different way to discover territories would be beneficial so that the default setting is not to see every single post in every territory. I’m working on decluttering this is ~memes so there’s fewer one-off memes shared directly within the territory and more commenting within fewer posts.

Maybe increase the fee for new lifetime founders with a rent to own option?

172 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 16h

If you feel like there are too many territories already, why make them cheaper?

58 sats \ 0 replies \ @Public_N_M_E 13h

Shhhhh some of us aren't made of money 🤣🤣

I welcome these reduced fees as now I may be able to say ~Music can self sustain and/or is profitable 💪💪

95 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 16h

We want more territories (especially when we build what's required to support them). We just want fewer people unhappy with territories, and given we've been forced to neglect them, people are more likely to be unhappy with them as-is. Reducing the cost is mostly aimed at increasing the benefit to existing territory owners.

67 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 15h

As a territory participant but not an owner (with no current plans to change that), weekly seems like it would lead to lots of territories fizzling out early, which might get frustrating to users (though maybe as an add-on? So you can go weekly after a month/year/etc?).

136 sats \ 14 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 15h

Any active territory founders on a monthly or yearly billing cycle were refunded the difference of what they paid for the rest of their billing period and the new price of the billing period.

I have 3 territories that I paid just 1 million sats to rent for the year but I seem to have only been refunded like 400k sats. Shouldn't I get back that much for each of the 3 territories that I paid the 1 mil sats for?

We're debating removing it or making it prohibitively expensive in the future, but for now it will stay the same.

Will those of us who paid the full 3 million sats still get to keep out territories for life if you eliminate the option in the future? ...or are you planning on removing that and pushing us to a monthly or yearly payment?

11 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b OP 15h

Shouldn't I get back that much for each of the 3 territories that I paid the 1 mil sats for?

Yes, I probably made the same mistake I made with territory revenue. Thanks for the heads up!

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 15h

🙏🏻

11 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 14h

I've manually corrected the mistake. It was the exact same mistake as territory revenue. This is like always getting the same person's name wrong.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Jon_Hodl 12h

No worries, man.

We appreciate you.

Will those of us who paid the full 3 million sats for lifetime territories still get to keep our territories if you decide to remove the option found them for life?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 12h

Yes.

0 sats \ 8 replies \ @ek 13h

Will those of us who paid the full 3 million sats still get to keep out territories for life if you eliminate the option in the future? ...or are you planning on removing that and pushing us to a monthly or yearly payment?

we don't know yet, all we know is that in hindsight, we probably shouldn't have added territories for life

19 sats \ 7 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 11h

What is the reasoning behind that regret?

I think lifetime territory founders have an incentive to build a community for life.

I spent the 3 million sats because I have every intention of building thriving communities that outlive me. I’m def playing the long game but my focus for now is driving new users to the platform so that we have more than ~1300 monthly users on SN.

151 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 11h

I think lifetime territory founders have an incentive to build a community for life.

Yes, that was the idea but in practice, they don't: from 16 territories paid for life (excluding ~bitcoin, ~nostr, ~meta, ~tech and ~jobs), 7 founders have disappeared (= no post since months). That's 43%.

163 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 11h

To be fair to those founders, I don't think they want to disappear. They bought them for the same reason we created the once option - it's way more convenient and gives peace of mind.

I think that owning a territory is probably like owning a boat. Sometimes owning one is more enjoyable than being on the water.

I think we've also done a poor job of giving them reason to put effort into their territories. Lots of work to do on our end.

In the meantime, the once option will remain. It might be good for all territory founders if we can learn to cope with this incentive problem.

1018 sats \ 1 reply \ @Jon_Hodl 10h

Yes, knowing that I don’t have to worry about forfeiting a territory if I were to miss a monthly payment makes it an even more valuable option.

14 sats \ 0 replies \ @StackerClaus 1h

Merry Christmas

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ch0k1 6h

Maybe the reason behind their disappearance is not losing interest but the fact something happened to them - we're people after all.

P.S: This brings the topic about lifetime territory inheritance - do you think it's a good idea the owner of a lifetime territory to be obliged to add his heirs which after a reasonable period of inactivity to take charge?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 11h

On a relative basis, once paid territories have more absentee founders. It looks like there's a small squatting effect. Maybe it's too early to tell, but that's what it looks like.

152 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 11h

Yeah, that makes sense. I have been super busy lately with a move and family for holidays but I am def here to grow the community for decades to come.

I think we need more users posting in more territories every day and I think many territory founders would agree.

After things slow down after the new year, my focus will be on attracting more quality posters and commenters.

55 sats \ 7 replies \ @BlokchainB 14h

Welp this all but kills my game plan to own my territories next calendar year. Plus I never got support on what happened with me trying to take over the stocks territory. I felt like my issue was just ignored when I think it was a legitimate bug

Either way. I like territories. I use them like a microblog and to share my thoughts and ideas to get stacker opinions this is why I was gearing up to cough up the 6M sats so I can blog into oblivion!

65 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 13h

I felt like my issue was just ignored when I think it was a legitimate bug

Sorry, I forgot that you also reported it and only mentioned that we shipped a fix in #732201.

70 sats \ 5 replies \ @k00b OP 14h

Wait, what happened with the stocks territory?

Also, we haven't removed the once option yet.

... IIRC you were trying to unarchive it. I'll see if I can find out convo.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @BlokchainB 14h

I was trying to buy it and I kept getting an error message saying it wasn’t available

So I thought you had a special set set aside for kr because I know he owned it first.

That is why I created stacker stocks and started fresh but i really wanted the stocks territory and I was going to add the legacy content to the new content I was going to bring to the territory.

Yet! Hmmm plan can still transpire in 2025.

75 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 14h

Did you want the name or just the old content in it?

66 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 14h

It looks like we fixed a bug unarchiving territories on October 20th, about a month after you probably reported the bug (you created ~Stacker_Stocks around then). I'm sorry we forgot that you reported it. It's easy to miss bug reports and/or correlations between bug reports and their fixes sometimes.

I can manually give you the result of an unarchive, once you clarify what you'd like done.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 13h

Just the old content in it.

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 10h

I'll get this done by EoW. It should be simple but it's a bit of heart surgery.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 14h

We're debating removing it or making it prohibitively expensive in the future, but for now it will stay the same.

plz reconsider, at least up it to 5mil there are parasites circling waiting to buy permanence and increase the stacker noise floor forever

@delete in 21 hours

34 sats \ 0 replies \ @thebullishbitcoiner 13h

Bullish on BOLT12 ⚡️

50 sats \ 5 replies \ @grayruby 16h

Are you keeping the 30% sybil fee or do you plan to reduce that as well?

68 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 16h

Afaik, @k00b mentioned it worked great against people zapping themselves. It also helps with network fees since we pay network fees out of that budget and it increased revenue for founders a lot. So I don't think we want to reduce it.

51 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 16h

That will remain. It's a pain to communicate (we get people who have been stackers forever thinking it's our "business model," and new stackers thinking it's a bug) but the higher it is the more honest zaps are, and if zaps are a big deal, honest zaps are a bigger one.

52 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 16h

Agreed. I think most stackers have gotten used to it. I will admit I was concerned when you did it that it would reduce activity on the site but to me it seems about the same. I think people aren't zapping as heavily as before but that could also be due to the run up in bitcoin price. Fiat maxis!!!

It does take some time for folks to understand it and it being so high gives you some wiggle room to lower it a bit if you felt you had to without having to drop it back to 10.

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 14h

I think people aren't zapping as heavily as before but that could also be due to the run up in bitcoin price

It could also be that a lot of the zaps were self-zaps ... unless you're talking about the zaps you're receiving of course.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 14h

I think the amount of zaps is about the same but people are zapping fewer sats. Many posts used to get over a thousands sat but now usually only a handful a day.

I wonder if this is due to the fee increase or the bitcoin price increase or a bit of both. I have noticed this with my posts but other stackers as well.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Public_N_M_E 14h

That explains the random sat deposit into my wallet. Cheers Devs. I'm glad you chose to make it less cost prohibitive to run a territory. I do think we're passed the start up craze we experienced when territories were released, so I don't anticipate a huge influx. But I for one am glad I can survive a little longer 🤣

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheMorningStar 11h

50k is a big drop!! Is it like a Christmas offer or real? I'm sure lot of stackers should be mulling over a new territory idea.

40 sats \ 2 replies \ @IamSINGLE 17h

Maybe an idea!!

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 17h

Sure I'll figure out how to turn that into a feature

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 17h

I mean "The World" can be a territory too. Now that the price is lowered and a few territories are in profit, I'm seeing an opportunity for me as well. Thank you for this.

7 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 8h

Thanks k00b!

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 16h

We've dropped to territory costs

tofuq is wrong with me

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Imyourfed 12h

Maybe there’s a secret Santa inside you, handing out gifts disguised as lower fee?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @030e0dca83 15h

Hi there. What if I have only wallet of Satoshi I won't be able to zap with real sats after 3th of Jan? And if yes, are you gonna add WoS as option to SN in the future?

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @ek 13h

You can receive sats via the lightning address but afaik, WoS provides no interface we could use to send sats.