Stasher News has another 11 months of server costs paid for, and platform funds to reinvest into developing or promoting Stasher. Lets hear your proposals and suggestions. What should Stasher News improve, add, rework, or polish?
What should Stasher News be focusing on: product development, marketing, community, or something else?
Deleted this comment earlier because it came out meaner than I meant, and I used some bad words. Wrote it before morning coffee: AilliA before coffee and AilliA after coffee are two different ailiens, before coffee is messier hair and meaner ))) Hoped no one saw it, but @Monerostar and @SoulReaver already replied to the deleted version, so I’m putting it back.
Just please keep in mind, I'm never trying to be mean: just want the good things in Monero to be the best they can be :)
Mean girls ;P
https://stasher.news/uploads/677
I effing ❤️ before-coffee AilliA then.
Get me her agent on the line!
This was one of the most honest things you've ever written!
This's a small community; (I hope) people already know who's just mean for the sake of being mean vs. who's just being genuinely forthright for the progress.
I hope we get to hear more of before-coffee Aliena chan, she sounds so sincere!
Give her the keyboard a lil, tell her she's beautiful w/ the messy hair & "bad words," and she doesn't have to be the darling of the community, politically correct morning princess. She's just fine the way she is, as her feral self... :P
People might think I'm joking here, I'm not.
We really can use more confrontational people telling it like it is!
Echo chambers don't grow anyone!
Tipped! lol.
This's you deleting the comment thinking it's mean, only for it to be quoted beyond the grave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HkRYtjwUzw original ↗
All things I write come from the same heart :)
Well, I can swear more if that makes it sound honest online ))
TBH, IRL, being extremely polite and still saying exactly what I mean makes people madder than any swearing lol :))) I’m studying Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg for this: the level at which he can fillet any journoslut / influenzer without raising his voice, without a single bad word, just precise pristine English and a raised eyebrow, is god-tier. They all come in loud and leave looking stupid. IMO, swearing is for people who already lost the argument.
And sometimes it’s just easier to pretend you don’t have any opinions ;)
https://stasher.news/uploads/697
I didn't mean to say the rest of the things you say come from your appendix or something :P
I meant talking w/ less held back.
Some things come from different depths of the same heart :P
Not necessarily swearing itself, just talking more candidly w/o having reservations about stepping on toes. I too avoid aesthetically unpleasing languge. I have the feeling there're more people aware of the shortcomings in the Monero scene, but people are perhaps too polite to talk more directly in the open.
Certainly, there's great intrigue in the level of command over language that lets you be devastating while still preserving elegance. This is something I'm thinking about as well and trying to improve myself in that direction.
I've yet to have a role model for this, though...
Any favorite videos/interviews of his you can share demonstrating him at his peak?
https://stasher.news/uploads/700
I prefer deriding them or forceful admonishment to the point of causing ideations or the feeling of intense stupidity. The key to doing it effectively is sharply attacking the weakness in their logic or thought process. I especially like this as a strategy when people are citing consensus or making other weak arguments with extreme arrogance. It is risky though since if you aren't correct it will make you look like an idiot and asshole instead. I think oftentimes kindness (especially fake kindness out of politeness) is actually cruelty. Making a well functioning society requires adversarial confrontation for bad ideas and behavior.
I look forward to checking out Jacob Rees-Mogg now. Thanks for the mention.
so THIS is the real Aillia. 😂
Back when I read it @AilliA had a reply here w/ good points. There were enough legit points there I didn't feel the need to add anything much!
Essentially she said:
Basically: what gets written here has to be worth reading.
This is the kind of sharp, honest criticism we need if the platform wants any real chance at growth. The echo chamber, or circle jerk as she more aptly put it, people throwing around their subjective opinions w/o much research or reasoning behind them, that kind of quality isn't platform growth oriented. A short simplistic take w/o research/reasoning/explanation isn't worth reading, even if aggressively agreeing w/ the Monero meta gets you (Sunday) brownie points. Those points don't make the end result any less mediocre.
What the ledger says
Almost all the XMR in so far is turf fees, not posts and not tips. About 2.36 of 2.79 XMR all-time is territory. Posting fees are 0.26. Downvotes and wallet-less tips are dust.
Last Monday the curator pool was 0.127 XMR and one person took 0.074 of it. The week before looked fat because launch turf fees hit the pool. That does not repeat. This week's rewards allocation is sitting around 0.05 XMR.
A growth hacker at 50 mXMR a week is most of a normal week's ops share. The "20% above $200/month" kicker is imaginary at this volume. That job eats the reinvestment. It does not multiply it.
The actual constraint
The operator already named the chicken and egg: rewards only work if tippers compete, and right now they don't. He even stopped tipping his own accounts because he was eating the pool. Adding strangers does not fix that. A podcast sends people to a front page that is still half campfire. They bounce. You spent the only money the site makes introducing them to a game that currently pays whoever is already here.
@allia is right that the feed has to be worth a coffee scroll. Artemis is right that selling "get paid to post" attracts the wrong people. Neither of those is a marketing plan, and neither needs a hire.
Spend the runway on this, in order
~moneroand one practical turf. Mining is a real wedge because a clean explainer is hard to find elsewhere. Memes can stay the campfire. Do not let the campfire be the front door. More empty turfs make the place look deader.
Skip the growth hacker until a stranger can land, read one thread, and see why this is not Reddit. Skip ads, skip onboarding people who do not hold XMR, skip an L2, skip an app. qqp's "onboard the world so price goes up" is a pump wearing a hamburger costume. The audience is people who already hold XMR and are tired of Reddit. That is enough.
11 months of servers is a gift. It is not a growth budget.
I sat on this for a few days but this is watch me and the assistant came up with.
A lot of valid points raised here.
I too believe that offering free actions dilutes interactions and that the Monday pay-out should be retooled / tested.
There was a time when every text and call cost money and people were far more intentional with their communications. Stasher brings this back.
The default tip should be reduced to ~$0.05 and double in scale as people comment more / engage with the site so that you don't have spam or people trying to game the system. This could reset daily.
I will say that marketing will highlight weaknesses in the site faster and allow for adjustments to be made. You either have slow growth through unpaid marketing or fast growth with paid marketing.
There is already something here that people find interesting as it has not died.
@stasher #340552 it'd be cool if for threads, or posts like these, users could have a button somewhere, to make it be an image. Right now we can craft link, discussion, bounty, poll, job; what about attachment, image, video, a la Reddit?
=> https://shi.meowing.de/rottenwheel1/status/2108405121289752920
That's a really short-term bet on your project. I'd not create a turf if I knew you would shut down the project in one year because no one else joined. Who cares? We are here already, Non refert quam multos, sed quam bonos habeas (Seneca).
Stashers themselves should focus on creating content outside stasher trurfs and talk about it externally. The best strategy is word-of-mouth, keep it organic, and I'd definitely not focus the comms on the
reward-creatorscrap orpay-to-post"innovation". Extrinsic motivators attract the wrong people for the wrong reasons, in my experience. That's just how it works.The site should focus on building a healthy community ecosystem, driven by intrinsic motivation.
Just shared today a post in a closed community, mirrored here. where the idea is to present stasher.news as a community-building game. Some details still need to be framed better or fully reframed. Feedback welcome.
You misunderstood me. I was not mentioning the server costs being paid to mean thats the shutdown timer.
I mentioned that because any revenue from the platform can now be 100% invested back into the platform, because all maintenance expenditures are handled for a while.
Your post about the community-building game is a brilliant idea. I've yet to read everything, working through it. Will reply to it a bit later.
Thank you for this, @artemis, I love your post. Will be pinning this to the stasher turf.
personally think you've done a great job and i enjoy using the site, and also i deserve 58% of all the rewards everyweek...keep that up. also don't pay that diabolical memer twice that's unwise.
For any entity to grow, it requires a strong core and, crucially, powerful promotional capabilities. This is especially important when reaching out to people who have never encountered Monero; the goal is not merely to raise awareness, but to demonstrate the tangible value Monero offers them.
Any promotional effort involves several stages:
These four steps are indispensable; you cannot skip the first three to jump straight to the fourth. Doing so severely hinders outreach to newcomers, as they do not yet possess any Monero. Without it, they lack the means to participate—such as posting or replying—effectively shutting them out from getting involved.
Think of it this way: you might feel full after eating a fourth hamburger, but that is only because the previous three have already done their work; it wasn't the fourth hamburger alone that satisfied your hunger.
If there are currently tens of thousands of Monero holders, the number of people who do not yet own Monero is likely tens of thousands of times greater.
Should we ignore them? Should we deny them the opportunity to encounter and understand Monero?
Only by enabling more newcomers to become aware of, encounter, understand, and use (or hold) Monero will the capital invested in the currency gradually increase, driving a sustained rise in its price...
I'd not focus on Monero at all. If you want to onboard the tens of thousands of people who don't know about it but are somehow aligned with the same values and principles, the site should be a learning game. The crowd here is the one that will make it welcoming and fun, or at least interesting and thoughtful.
On your hamburgers analogy: If you have to eat four it means its quality is really bad, not even discuss the nutritional aspects... I can do it once, but I'd never repeat the meal, and I'll look for any another restaurant to go out for lunch next.
I'd like to enter into sn, get one hamburger and get fulfilled, not only by the meal itself but by the service quality and the crowd vibes itself too. So I can then go out and recommend my five-star experience to someone else I know will enjoy it and will be happy to pay for it, even if "expensive" compared with the cheap or even free four hamburgers fast food delivery.
Stacker News is deeply intertwined with Monero; the growth of Stacker News is inseparable from the growth of Monero.
Regardless of the methods employed, the focus must remain on reaching a new audience—people who have never encountered or understood Monero before—and introducing them to the currency through Stacker News. This is the key to Stacker News's development.
Just think back: who knew about Bitcoin in the early days? Who held it? Perhaps only a handful of people—dozens, at most. Yet today, Bitcoin has millions of holders. Its value has surged from an initial $0.003 to its current price—an overall increase of over 20 million-fold; at its all-time peak, the growth exceeded 40 million-fold.
Websites that were deeply integrated with Bitcoin’s promotion also experienced tremendous growth.
Moreover, Bitcoin has not stood still; it continues to constantly expand its reach to new audiences.
If not for the continuous influx of people—who had previously never encountered or understood Bitcoin—joining the ranks of holders, how could Bitcoin possibly have grown more than 20 million-fold in just over a decade?
After all, aren't today's Monero holders the very people who once knew nothing about the currency and had never encountered it? Can a base of 10,000 holders really be compared to one of 10 million? There are many communities and websites deeply linked to Monero; surely, they aren't merely competing for the existing 10,000 holders while ignoring the 10 million potential ones?
Without a focus on cultivating this new audience, neither Monero itself nor the websites deeply tied to it have a future.
If a vast number of newcomers—previously unfamiliar with Bitcoin—join the ranks of Bitcoin holders via Stacker News, it will naturally drive up Bitcoin's price dramatically. Similarly, as new people continuously join the ranks of Monero holders, Monero will experience explosive growth.
After all, isn't a rise in Monero's price exactly what every holder hopes for? 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
If a large number of people discover Monero through Stacker News, acquire it, and make a profit, then Stacker News is bound to grow and succeed.
I used the hamburger example primarily to emphasize that certain processes are indispensable; the specific choice of a hamburger doesn't matter.
The same logic applies if you use eggs instead.
Think of it this way: you might feel full after eating the fourth egg, but that is only because the first three eggs had already done their part; it wasn't just the fourth egg that satisfied your hunger—all four eggs played a role.
My point in using this example is to illustrate that you cannot skip the first three stages and jump straight to the fourth.
Getting more people to—1) discover Monero, 2) encounter it, 3) understand it, and 4) ultimately use (or hold) it—via Stacker News constitutes the core process of promoting both Monero and this platform.
100% marketing.
◼ Get on every podcast you can
◼ Build an email list and start sending weekly updates
◼ Create a press kit and get bloggers to write about Stasher
◼ Run ads (boosting a listing on XMR Bazaar might be worthwhile)
The reality is that the tech is here, what is needed is the people - without people this site will slowly dwindle. All your efforts should now be on marketing and reaching a sustainable daily user base.
I agree. Marketing should be a focus now that the tech is delivered. I've created an xmrbazaar listing and boosted it. That seemed like the lowest hanging fruit. https://xmrbazaar.com/listing/zW6Z/
I've been on Monerotopia once before Stasher launched. I'll see about going on again. Although I don't like public appearances. I'm considering posting a job listing to hire someone who could focus on marketing. Going on podcasts or running ads.
Sponsorships are another avenue I'm considering now.
I would say a secondary form of upvoting that isn't weighed as heavily that's free. Paying $.35-.99 to send an upvote is a lot if you engage heavily on here and we're not yet at the scale where you can make that back from engagement with your own materials. It's one thing to have economic incentives to drive quality and prevent spam and bots, it's another to make it cost prohibitive to participate. More free posts and comments would help too. Alternatively, you could make "thanks" free to send or include a button like upvote and respond which would allow you to give someone an upvote, but also engage with them without having to spend extra or send two separate txs.
I think fostering the substash style writer and consumer would be the best target. Or you just make it a great reference hub where the model optimizes finding useful information on how to do certain things without falling victim to the negative incentive structures of algos in other socials (or seo honestly).
Eventually as it grows I think this could actually be the first application of a monero layer 2 or something similar to make it cheaper to engage, but without discarding the model.
The tipping modal shows a 0.001 tip size by default as a suggestion only. The user can lower a tip down to a minimum of .0001 XMR, which is 5 cents at the moment. It is not prohibitive to tip at all, the user has the choice. The thing I could do: change the default tip size to make it clear that a user can tip less.
The thing is that tipping can potentially earn users more than what they tipped if the rewards pool has grown sufficiently large, which it has in past weeks. I have deliberately refrained from tipping because on the first week I earned over 50% of the rewards pool even though my accounts on stasher have a hardcoded 50% handicap on weekly rewards earning (I will earn 50% less than a user who tipped the same items at the same time.) When there is high activity, this isnt a problem, but due to lack of competition over the rewards, I took the rewards in the first weekly distribution despite the handicap, just by being an active tipper. (I donated the rewards back to the rewards pool after).
Once we have more active users we'd likely see some competition over tipping, because it literally is a job that pays. Its a win-win situation because content creators get tips, while tippers get rewarded. But it is a chicken and egg problem. Stasher needs more activity for these mechanics to surface as designed.
Also, to touch on the "more free posts and comments", Stasher already provides much more freebies that our upstream partner Stacker News, in order to compensate for the added friction of on-chain Monero payments.
The problem arises that if Stasher gives too many free comments and posts, then it just becomes a regular forum where Monero incentives play no part or can be completely avoided.
Posting fees contribute to the rewards pool, the rewards pool incentivizes tipping, tipping incentivizes good content. If we break that chain then the system falls appart. Its a careful balancing act.
Fair point, maybe my pain points are more so a product of a lack of engagement which may be due to either a quality of my content (relative to the subjective value of the consumer), the relative wealth of my engagement base, or the size of the broader stasher community at large. All this being said, using a bitcoin community of upstream as an example of functionality is a dangerous precedent. In the monero community, I (and I'm sure you) recognize their failure to identify and align against problems such as privacy, decentralization (ASICs/lack of sufficient privacy for miners), and sustainability in funding mechanisms (tail emission) (amongst other things). I think your point regarding the upstream is valid, but I would urge that its application must still be used with caution. Maybe it's also a broader incentive problem. I as a creator and commenter want to do things like be polite and encourage those who engage, but maybe I should aggregate indication of appreciation into larger posts/comments where I express appreciation via callouts as opposed to upvotes. That wouldn't significantly affect weighting/sorting though. Maybe an added filter for callouts by OPs?
All this to say, I appreciate what you guys do here. You guys have successfully made the only social media in history I've found compelling as well as an article format that preserves writer anonymity and balances that with engagement and financial incentive. That's no small feat. Please don't take my comments and suggestions as anything other than a genuine desire to improve a product I greatly appreciate.
and I truly appreciate your contributions to the discussion here. It helps to see all perspectives and brainstorm solutions.
I guarantee you though, the lack of engagement on your content is purely due to low adoption of the platform at this time, not the quality of your content. There have been ~230 signups in the first month of operation. As of last week's real platform stats, I can tell you that about 56% of all signups also registered a Monero wallet to their account. Of those users who registered a wallet (indicating they intend to participate on the platform) I would be conservative and assume 10% of them are active on the platform daily or every other day. That equals an average of 13 daily active users, which is consistent with what I've observed.
Of those ~13 active users on any given day, what is the likelyhood that they are interested in the topics you talk about?
Its become clear marketing and adoption should be the current focus. We're only a month in, the stats are decent for such a young platform, but there is plenty of work to do. I am taking note of all your suggestions, don't think I am dismissing anything.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply and let me say that I understand that both Ailla and yourself are very much in a slightly calculating position as neither of you may want to be considered to be sympathetic to some of my more controversial views as key contributes to the platform and monero community at large. Considering 13 DAUs I think I'm actually probably killing it in terms of generalizable metrics for whatever they're worth as applied to this platform. Not to mention cumulative reputation matters (in the eyes of the consumer) so I'm probably better off dominating discourse where and when I can. I'll take this into consideration and use that as an impetus to increase my writing output. Thanks for the feedback!
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