Posters will post better comments if they earn XMR from up votes, but as a reader what is the incentive to up vote a post? There’s certainly an incentive to pay to submit a comment, but there really isn’t any sustainable reason to vote on posts.
Initially people will do it for novelty, charity, to test the stasher or just to use their monero...and then what?
Weekly rewards to voters is a cool idea but intermittent rewards are unlikely to sustain behaviour. If voting incentives improve this site will catch fire. Current set up lacks an effective economic flywheel.
Reflecting on what I've upvoted, I see it as a way to reward people for finding interesting or important information for me. Otherwise a way to boost important posts I want others to also see.
I've put about £1 into posting and have received £5 in return which allows me to keep on commenting, so it becomes a positive loop if your posts are getting engagement.
I think that is the point and strength of the system.
It's more of a way of content curation and moderation based on free market economics rather than an "engagement" algorithm which I think is a refreshing take on social media in general.
Paying for comments changes the dynamic by which you will only do so if you have something meaningful to add to the conversation.
What I think will happen here is that you will get less interactions but the interactions you do receive will be of a far greater quality than quantity.
I have a great idea: we could set up a dedicated section for product promotion. Users would be categorized into five tiers—A1 through A5—based on their activity levels. Merchants could list products for others to share, with rewards varying according to the sharer's tier (e.g., A1 gets 0.001 XMR, A2 gets 0.0015 XMR, A3 gets 0.002 XMR, etc., with the specific amounts set by the merchant). Naturally, the merchant would cover these costs, as sharing effectively serves as advertising for them. If a product sells via a sharer's link, they would earn a 1% commission on the sale (again, the specific rate would be set by the merchant). I believe many people would be willing to share these offers; meanwhile, merchants could promote and advertise their products for a minimal investment—effectively turning sharers into a form of distributor for their goods.
While I understand your concern, I think it's a bit too early to tell. I do see hesitancy from users to upvote content, but I think that can be partially explained by users not understanding how the reward system works. This will be improved over time as users seek to inform themselves.
During this launch period I will be gathering data to potentially make tweaks and improvements. But already I think the results could prove to be favorable. It has been less than a week since launch and already the rewards pool has grown to 0.15 XMR, with about 100 registered users on the platform.
As adoption and user activity grows, so too should the rewards pool, making it a further incentive to participate.
In theory, the rewards pool should be all the incentive one needs to participate and upvote good quality content that they themselves enjoy, because if they are not doing this, which of course is an option they have, but they would be leaving that money on the table.
not a concern just an observation. in the novelty phase people will do everything, but i wonder how much incentive there is to regularly up vote. rewards aside what's the motive? also not a hater. stasher is great. love it man.
I hear you. Do you have any ideas on how we could create better incentives?
Give top 20% upvoters King (crown emoji) status, some benefits, free replies, unlock pfp, discount terf, or other things that can only be earned not bought etc. Give top 20% down voters the demon emoji....
Many such ideas.
These are genuinely some good ideas. Thanks for that.
For your idea of adding an emoji status, this is actually something we have partially implemented already. I just haven't gotten to flesh it out because during the launch I'm focusing more on security and stability before trying to implement new features like this, but you can see the beginnings of it with the coin emoji that you get next to your name if you've tipped a post in the past 24 hours.The plan is to expand on that and whenever a user has the coin symbol next to their name it would grant them certain perks like you described. We just need to ensure the system can't be cheated or easily gamed.
so you're right on the money with that and it is planned for some point in the future.