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Nowadays, it would be extremely difficult to live off zaps. However, we can dream.
Zap The Planet: The Birth Of A Global Circular Economy
Nowadays, it would be extremely difficult to live off zaps. However, we can dream.
In Bitcoin circles, a zap is a tip in Satoshis. Satoshis or Sats are the smallest unit in Bitcoin. The value-for-value economy relies on zaps and Sats, and it’s growing by the minute. The Lightning Network introduced the possibility of microtransactions to Bitcoin, and Bitcoiners everywhere created a global circular economy with it.
At the moment, the numbers are still small, but that won’t be the case forever.
In the real world, circular economies are popping up everywhere. Wherever there are unbanked individuals, Bitcoin is helping them access value and cover their necessities while keeping money circulating within the community. That’s beauty right there. However, those circular economies are limited by the hard realities of physical space. Limited to the people around a specific area and a few tourists.
Don’t get us wrong, they are absolutely necessary for Bitcoin’s success. Both are.
The global circular economy is a unified field, a different animal altogether. Since it lives on the internet, boundaries don’t exist, and limitations are few. It could grow exponentially at any point, and it probably will.
Before getting into it, let’s explore where the idea came from.
This is where zaps come from. Believe it or not, the team behind former MTV VJ Adam Curry developed the technology that podcasting is built upon. Two decades later, a billion-dollar industry spawned from their ideas.
That wasn’t the end of the road for them, though. Apple introduced podcasting to iTunes in 2005, effectively ossifying it, stopping innovation. To avoid a complete takeover, Adam Curry’s team developed an alternative directory called Podcast Index.
The next step was Podcast 2.0, a new standard that included features like transcripts, chapters, licenses, trailers, podcast recommendations, and social interactions. The most impactful feature, though, was Value4Value and Boostgrams. Powered by Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, based on Sats, these innovations opened an avenue for podcasts to receive funding directly from their listeners.
Blubrry’s guide explains the concepts further:
“Today a handful of apps at NewPodcastApps.com allow a listener to donate sats to your show every minute they listen (5,10,100 sats a minute) or make donations at the show or episode level (1000, 10,000, 50,0000, 100,000 sats) in what is often called a boostgram, aka boosts.”
About the value-for-value philosophy, the V4V site explains:
“Value4Value is a monetization model, a content format, and a way of life. It is about freedom and openness, connection and free speech, sound money and censorship resistance. The largest success to date of applied V4V is Podcasting 2.0. Nostr’s zaps are another example.”
You know what that means; it’s time to talk about zaps.
Using a Bitcoin-inspired architecture, developer fiatjaf released Nostr as free and open source software and walked away, leaving the protocol in the hands of the people. According to Matt Odell’s Discreetlog, Nostr is:
“An open communication protocol that can be used to send messages across a distributed set of relays in a censorship resistant and robust way.
- Anyone can run a relay.
- Anyone can interact with the protocol.
- Relays can choose which messages they want to relay.
- Users are identified by a simple public private key pair that they can generate themselves.”
The protocol’s killer feature is zaps. A native integration with the Bitcoin network powers the user’s ability to tip their favorite content creators. Zaps set Nostr apart from other services. At the moment, Nostr’s most popular implementation is a Twitter clone of sorts. The protocol can be much more, though. The community is testing hundreds of different implementations as you read these lines, and they all rely on zaps.
According to Zaplife, last week alone the Nostr community zapped 461,081 Sats to content creators worldwide. That’s $413.72 at the time of writing, which doesn’t seem like a lot. In the future, though, that dollar value might look very different. And the zapped total for any given week will probably grow significantly as well.
Let’s zoom out. According to One Network, in 2025:
“Reports estimate 792,000 zaps among half a million daily users, totaling nearly $2 million USD in value.”
Again, not enough for the recipients to live off, but “It’s the beginning of a Bitcoin-powered creator economy, an internet where creators get paid instantly, peer-to-peer.” That’s right, the value goes straight to content creators. There are no intermediaries. No other service or platform can offer this level of independence and censorship resistance. Value-for-value might be the future of the Internet.
Plus, the numbers are slowly but steadily rising. According to Nostr.Band, there have been 6,114,760 zaps in the last 6 months. Those zaps transferred 2,683,075,070 sats, which is around $2,3M at the time of writing.
What started as a Hacker News clone that, instead of Karma Points, uses zaps and Sats to rank user-submitted content, grew into one of Bitcoin’s finest communities. Stacker News is the Internet’s premier forum to discuss Bitcoin-related matters, and a growing economy nurtures it.
Let’s look at some stats; according to December’s Monthly Report:
“In December, 637 stackers wrote 1,235,995 words across 4,093 posts and 18,386 comments, earning a total of 2,515,889 sats, for an average of 2.04 sats per word, and 2.29 sats per word on posts.”
Translating, the total sats are around $2,3K at the time of writing.
Zooming out, during the last 12 months, the Stacker News community zapped 101M Satoshis, the equivalent of $90K.Once again, not enough to live off, but…
The Value4Value model was initially created with podcasts in mind. Fountain is one of the apps that fills that gap, but it feels bigger. At the time of writing, it feels like the software of choice for Bitcoin’s podcast industry. As you might imagine, zaps are a crucial factor.
We’re still waiting for this year’s Fountain Rewind report, but 2024’s is available. The title is “In 2024, listeners sent $127,900 to creators on Fountain”, and it offers valuable data that we can extrapolate to our current reality.
“The 2 BTC sent is equivalent to $127,900 based on a daily price conversion but it would be worth nearly 50% more today. You sent over 40,000 boosts to your favourite shows and artists, with an average boost value of 3,380 sats (around $3.20) To add to that, over 63 million sats were streamed over the course of the year, representing 32% of total value sent”.
At the time of writing, the 63 million sats are worth arounf $5.2K. That means, boosts are a much more popular way of zapping than streaming sats.
The global circular economy zaps create is a phenomenon like no other, and the Value4Value model might be the future of entertainment financing. However, it’s a cold environment. Real-world circular economies provide the heat and create the balance necessary for this whole process to work. Like any modern business, we need both an internet and a brick-and-mortar presence.
According to the Federation Of Bitcoin Circular Economies:
“A Bitcoin Circular Economy is a local economic ecosystem where Bitcoin (BTC) is used increasingly as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Within a Bitcoin Circular Economy, BTC is continuously circulated between individuals, businesses and other entities as a means of payment for goods and services and for settlement of other financial obligations.”
As we already stated, Bitcoin circular economies are popping up all over the world, with Africa leading the pack, and Latin America and the Caribbean following closely.
At the time of writing, the world hasn’t caught up with Bitcoin, much less with zaps. When they do, they’ll realize the Value4Value model is exactly what they were waiting for. Crowdfunding is already a multi-billion-dollar industry, but it’s not nearly as powerful as zaps. The reason: it relies on an intermediary that takes a cut and can cancel your crowdfunding efforts with the push of a button.
The Value4Value model and zaps inherit some of Bitcoin’s most powerful characteristics: transactions are irreversible, censorship-resistant, permissionless, pseudonymous, and hard to track. Users can use zaps to fund their favorite artists, publications, and charities without anyone being involved. The world has seldom seen a tool this powerful, and its characteristics will grow in value over time.
Participating couldn’t be easier: open a Nostr account and start zapping, join StackerNews, or download a podcast app from NewPodcastApps.com and start streaming zaps or boosting your favorite shows. Also, you could create content for any of those platforms and start receiving zaps immediately. It’s that easy.
Start receiving and sending bitcoin now
