A sovereign social network
powered by Bitcoin

Thoughts on how to push pow.co forward

First, let us acknowledge hodlocker.com

Hodlocker is a service that allows people to lock up their bitcoin indefinitely into the future. It allows people to post along with their lock, creating an onchain post + locking script.

Hodlocker has exploded in popularity. In just under a week, more than 2700 BSVs have been locked up.

Why is this significant? Because bitcoiners are learning the value of costly signaling. This is great! They are also doing something that can only be done onchain with bitcoin, another plus.

I believe that hodlocker is doing so well because nobody is telling anyone how to use it. It is just simply being used, with people locking coins into requesting more features and the app is building itself. In many ways, it is similar to the kind of ecosystem we desire on this website.

pow.co has a much larger feature set, infinitely greater possibilities for communication, and yet the userbase is an embarassingly small fraction of hodlocker.

What hodlocker's popularity reveals is that people do not need to understand some arcane concept, nor do they need myriad features, nor do they need a well-built UI. They simply need to be able to play.

How can we push pow.co forward? The true answer is I do not know. I have done what I can to discuss it, share it, explain it, to dozens if not hundreds of people.

If we think about how can people play on pow.co, the truth is that there are many barriers to overcome. For one, you need to understand that your posts will take time to mine and move up rankings. This is difficult to create a dopamine-filled experience. Secondly, if you are not attending the daily meetings where boosted posts are discussed, then you are not getting much feedback from the site itself or other users. Comments are fine, but they are mostly anonymous now, which means that meming or humorous communication is not at the forefront or common.

Lastly, the site has not produced any virality or made a lasting impression on many others. Several of the people who used to be here posting regularly are gone, and though so so many people know of pow.co's existence, they are simply not here using it. It is not an issue of getting the site in front of people; they are choosing to spend their time elsewhere. I don't know how to solve this problem.

The good news: hodlocker is the missing link between now and the boostpow economy. So if anything, there is a ripe opportunity to be taken advantage of. Let us dispense with ideologies and trying to make people think or use things in a certain way, and give bitcoiners a space to be playful and have fun.

Thanks for reading my 2 cents (or 100,000 satoshis).

Features I believe would make the pow.co experience a lot more fun

• Post history: There is no way for me to see a full list of all the posts I've made, which at this point would be substantial. I want others to be able to see it too.

• Instant post with minimum boost: posting takes about 1-2secs longer than it ought to, I think, and posts should start with the smallest possible amount of boost, so that they can appear on the feed as soon as possible.

• Leaderboard: we have a trending topics board, why not have a leaderboard showing who has spent the most energy in a given timeframe?

Miscellaneous idea:

• If we have bitchat channels for any given topic, why not have potential bitchat channels for any given post? Each post could be its own discussion thread.