The other day I posted an “unpopular opinion” about hiding zaps from client UI which received a range of responses (mostly displeased). Today I wanted to expand on that thought and the reason for that opinion.
I’ve thought this through and in my mind had a perfect response, but this is a new day and I’ll probably butcher it.
I think the common push back was that maybe this is an anti-bitcoin, anti-lightning idea. Seeing how we have many people who are passionate about both, that provokes a passionate pushback.
However, I think it’s the exact opposite - pro-bitcoin, pro-growth.
There are several ways I look at this, from a “sales” perspective, from product discovery perspective and from the psychology perspective.
The most successful sales strategies are usually “pull” strategies. They bring prospects in and allow them to sell themselves on the idea or the thing. I view nostr as a pull technology. It brings people in for various reasons, but highly unlikely that it’s for money. Even the first batch of bitcoiners that joined did not come for the money aspect - we were escaping Twitter. Zaps are amazing and I’ve been a vocal proponent of what they may mean for the protocol. I tried to explain this as simply as I could on heynostr.com However, I think showing the UI to people who are not familiar with it, especially since it is an optional setting is a “push” move.
On its own, displaying new features in new apps is a good thing - after all, why have the app if it does nothing new? But zaps have a unique dynamic about them because they are money. Combined with the fact that it’s all based on Bitcoin, it’s easy to start classifying Nostr as “that one social network for bitcoiners”. I’ve heard (read) this already from people on the outside. Heck, even bitcoiners on Twitter say this (although with push back, explaining why they are not moving here).
There’s nothing wrong with being an “app” for bitcoiners, IF that’s your goal. But if the goal is global adoption, the social use case has to appeal to a more general audience who may not care about the same things we care about.
Side note: I think zaps in UI visible by default are perfectly fine in other use cases like Zapstr. There, the entire premise rests on the ease of use of payments. Other use cases where money making IS the primary goal are perfectly suited for always visible zap UI. Even social clients that specifically focus on some audience are more than justified in displaying zaps loudly (like Plebstr).
From a product discovery perspective, it may actually be more pleasant and have the “pull” effect of effective sales strategies to allow the user discover zaps on their own. Even if the UI hides zaps by default (even from people who have it enabled), it will be hard to stay on nostr for any significant duration without running into zap talk. In fact, it’s probably impossible. Someone is always talking about zaps! These are the types of moments where a user can discover zaps on their own terms and ease into the idea.
Once the marketplace functionality is introduced into clients, it will be all but impossible to not run into zaps when trying to click on products or locked / blurred content. Since the primary function of a marketplace is to SELL and to BUY and money is expected to be transacted, there’s nothing sketchy about making it obvious.
Which leads my train of thought to the social use case and user perception. Obviously, nostr is much bigger than zaps. It’s a protocol that enables all sorts of apps to interact with the social and the payment layers. People will join for different reasons appealing to them. Some might come from the music perspective, others may want to escape the payment processing issues in the adult entertainment industry, and others may find work through nostr and get paid in zaps as part of a global workforce. However, each has payments baked in as a function and an expectation. Social does not. Yes, social enables sending of payments as remittance, but there has never been a dynamic value for value exchange.
This being said, the great thing about Nostr is that nobody has to listen to what I have to say and they can build whatever the hell they want! Clients will be built for specific audiences that have features that cater to that niche. It is just my opinion that the client to replicate the existing onboarding flows and the familiarity of existing apps (without pushing zaps) is going to be the one to win the social use case in the text category. At least for a while. Of course, there will be other categories that cater to younger audience like video curation, entertainment (photo and video content) and perhaps even others that I can’t even imagine at this point.
One other thing I haven’t even touched on is the onboarding process and how that can be used to introduce Zaps in a fun, non-invasive way. I think as apps develop native wallet capabilities, we’re going to see the onboarding get creative and fun (I can already think of a situation where you can give someone a few sats to zap before they even set up their profile!)
Let’s keep an open mind and keep the dialog flowing. This is a lot of fun to me and I hope not to be misunderstood. My only goal is to help nostr and bitcoin thrive.