Okay I had no idea how this note was going to conclude based on the flow throughout but I least expected us to become Walter White I don’t hate it though and you’re probably right

I don’t fully agree there. Many users participate in V4V on other social platforms, it just isn’t called that, and isn’t as direct and open of a system as it is on Nostr. On TikTok and YouTube for instance, the platform enables viewers of live streams to directly tip/gift items to the streamers. That is V4V, but it usually comes with restrictions on who is eligible to participate and involves fiat or some form of platform-specific tipping system, all KYC’d. Nostr takes that idea and opens it to anyone who is willing to attach a lightning address to their profile. Nostr also expands it beyond live streams to every post can receive tips/gifts. The key is that those platforms have content and creators that keep people coming back. They have that because they build tools that allow creators to grow and engage with their audiences. They build those tools because they understand how crucial content is to their business of advertising. Nostr clients are not in the business of advertising, and so they fail to understand just how important content and creators are.

freedom is never going to be mass adopted

You’re right, but I suspect optimistic about the number of users that actually participate in those value-for-value systems. HOWEVER, the data I remember about how many users create social media content and how many generate ad-revenue only, without participating in any payment, is a bit old. So your optimism might be well-founded, if not now, then someday. But not to worry, I still zap memes, Corn. 😂

This seems to be true.

Haha 😂🫂 To add some rough numbers into the conversation, generally about 1% of users on social media create new content, 9% engage with content, and 90% are lurkers/content consumers. However when it comes to direct tipping, something like 40% of users engage in tipping creators. Often it’s in live stream settings. Gamified tipping interfaces see more use, which explains why live streams see a lot of it. I think it also explains partly why zapping has appeal here. There is a sort of gamification surrounding it, as you have zap comments, top zaps, etc. I’m very optimistic about the future of artists and V4V here if clients continue giving creators more meaningful ways to publish content, engage with audiences, and make zapping as frictionless as possible.

That’s about what I remember: 1% of users create something crazy like 95% of the social media content. I think the percentage of users who tip has improved since I last looked at it, likely because it’s gotten easier to send money on livestreams and such. I think NOSTR likely has the best advantage there, because it’s much easier to connect, fund a wallet, and send zaps than it is to pay creators on any other platform. The UX of adding payment methods and sending payments on any other platform is shockingly bad. One might think those huge companies would make that as easy as possible, because revenue, but it’s a joke.

Nostr zaps are far and away superior to other platforms’ tipping mechanisms because of the openness and interoperability enabled by the lightning network. It allows Nostr users to instantly send payments globally to literally anyone with a connected wallet. Legacy platforms can’t begin to compete with that with their existing payment/tipping systems.

And there’s no fat platform fee either.

Exactly! 🔥

Nostr will grow for the masses, on one level, as other options become too hard.