Zap Cooking Newsletter — Issue 7
- 🔥 Founder’s Note — Growth, Kaizen, and Taking More Shots
- 📈 Growth Focus — Looking Beyond Our Own Corner
- 🧠 What We’re Learning
- 🗳 Image Polls, GIFs, and Keeping Nostr Fun
- From the Relays
- 🛒 Marketplace Progress — Almost Ready
- 🛠 What We Worked On This Week
- 🍽 Closing
🔥 Founder’s Note — Growth, Kaizen, and Taking More Shots
Nostr has not really been growing. That much is obvious.
We are all still waiting for that spark.
And the truth is, we miss every shot we do not take, and right now, we are not taking enough shots.
In the world of vibe coding, it is often more fun to experiment with the new than it is to keep building on the old. I think that gives us an advantage at Zap Cooking.
We have been building this brand for almost three years now. We have become part of the food culture of the Nostr ecosystem, and I am proud of that. But we do not want to be only that.
We want to bring new people into Nostr.
We want to make onboarding easier.
We want people to use Zap Cooking because it is genuinely good, because it is useful, and because it can compete with mainstream web and mobile apps alike.
Our near-term goal is simple: connect and expand.
That is turning out to be harder than we realized. But that is okay.
Every failure, every trial, every feature is a lesson in how to improve. That is why we embrace the Kaizen philosophy. Continuous improvement, every day.
Since December, when we added the Spark wallet, we’ve been improving Zap Cooking every single day. Over the past few months especially, we’ve gone into overdrive to maximize improvements across the product, expand the feature set, and sharpen the overall user experience as we work to commercialize the Zap Cooking experience.
I believe hard work and adaptability will create growth, whether that growth shows up personally or through the brand. Either way, we win or we learn. In that frame, there is no real way to lose.
So we keep moving forward.
We are grateful for the people supporting Zap Cooking today, and we would ask you to help us spread the word. Share what we are building with your friends on the normie social networks. We need to get Nostr out there more.
One new npub at a time.
— Seth
📈 Growth Focus — Looking Beyond Our Own Corner
This week has been less about one big launch and more about getting serious about growth.
We’ve been spending time looking at how to improve the way Zap Cooking is presented, how to reach people outside our usual circles, and how to create more momentum around what we’re building.
That has meant looking at marketing efforts in other sectors, studying how audience-first businesses grow, and paying closer attention to the bridge between a good product and an understandable message.
We’ve also done direct outreach to a few aligned people and spent time researching ways to improve the pitch, the positioning, and the overall presentation.
The goal is not growth for the sake of vanity.
The goal is to help more people understand what Zap Cooking is: a food community built on open systems, direct support, and real human signal.
We are still early.
But the work right now is making the signal clearer.
🧠 What We’re Learning
One of the biggest lessons right now is that building in the open does not automatically mean people understand what you are building.
Zap Cooking makes a lot of sense once people spend time with it. Recipes, community, Lightning, open publishing, portable identity, support for builders.
But getting that across in a simple and compelling way is its own kind of work.
This week reinforced that.
We’ve been refining language, improving positioning, and thinking more intentionally about how to tell the story in a way that invites people in without losing what makes Zap Cooking different.
That work matters just as much as the code.
Growth is not just attention.
Growth is clarity.
🗳 Image Polls, GIFs, and Keeping Nostr Fun
This week we added GIF support and polls to Zap Cooking, and then pushed it a step further with image polls.
This was not an idea that appeared out of nowhere. Part of building on Nostr is staying adaptive and learning from what other clients are trying.
We saw Primal roll out the GIF button. Then Wisp added it too, with the note that it only took about 10 minutes. That made the point pretty clear: if this kind of lightweight fun improves posting, it makes sense to bring it into Zap Cooking too.
So we did.
We also noticed that NIP-88 polls were becoming part of that same wave of experimentation, so we added polls as well.
But we wanted to take it one step further.
So we added image support to polls.
That changes the experience in a big way. Polls are already a fun social mechanic, but adding images gives them a whole different energy. Better food debates. Better visual choices. Better community participation. It makes polling feel more native to a food and culture app.
We believe Zap Cooking may be the first client to add image support to polls, and we’d love to see other clients pick up the idea too.
That’s part of what makes Nostr special.
Good ideas spread.
Clients adapt.
The network gets more fun.
We want to help keep that spirit alive.
From the Relays
One of the recipes that stood out this week came from @Yarnlady 🧶 , featuring the Moist Maker Meatloaf.
Now, do we fully understand why it is called the Moist Maker? We do not.
Are we asking questions? Also no.
Sometimes in life, and especially in food culture, you just have to accept the mystery and respect the result. And the result here looks downright delicious.
Yes, “moist” remains one of the most controversial words in the English language. Yes, we are choosing to keep that controversy alive. And yes, this meatloaf looks like it earns the title.
Bold name. Strong energy. Solid loaf.
You can see the full post here:
https://zap.cooking/note1ev25q00mzzkgkh54wka49zpewffceax33qv8uxv2xdmruv3frttsp48srx
🛒 Marketplace Progress — Almost Ready
Behind the scenes, we’ve also been testing the marketplace concept.
We think this will be a strong feature for members who want to post products and offerings, and just as importantly, for users who want a better way to discover them. That is a big part of the vision: not just publishing, but discovery.
The marketplace foundation is now built, and this week we improved product handling by automatically removing duplicate listing events so only the latest version of a product appears. That helps keep the marketplace cleaner, more current, and easier to trust.
We’ve also added legal terms to help protect Zap Cooking and set clear boundaries around how this should be used. We want to support legitimate food culture, creator goods, and aligned commerce, while being very clear that this is not intended to become anything resembling a Silk Road type scenario.
If all goes well, we are aiming to roll it out next week.
🛠 What We Worked On This Week
The kitchen stayed busy this week, and this time the work was not just foundational. We shipped real improvements across polls, payments, memberships, and the marketplace.
Poll Creation Enhancements
We improved poll creation in a big way.
Zap Cooking polls now support image uploads, which makes “this vs that” style posts far more visual and engaging. These display in a grid layout and feel especially native to a food app, where sometimes the image says more than the text.
We also added a duration-based interface for setting poll length, along with real-time updates and a smoother, scrollable composer experience. Altogether, it makes creating polls feel faster, cleaner, and more fun.
NIP-57 Zap Metadata Recording
We improved the way zap payment metadata is processed and displayed.
This update ensures NIP-57 zap details are correctly recorded in transaction histories, including user comments and payment context. We also added compliance fixes to make sure the data format is validated properly.
That may sound technical, but it matters. Better zap metadata means a clearer and more trustworthy value-for-value experience.
NIP-88 Poll Integration
We also completed deeper NIP-88 poll integration.
That includes support for real-time poll results, multi-threaded reply tags, and one-vote-per-user validation. We introduced a poll modal and streamlined the user experience so polls display more cleanly in the feed.
Polls are becoming a bigger part of the social layer on Nostr, and we wanted Zap Cooking to support that in a way that feels polished and useful.
Membership Dashboard Updates
We updated the membership dashboard to make it cleaner and more helpful.
There is now a dedicated Cancel Membership section that simplifies cancellations and provides more tailored options depending on a user’s tier. We also improved the visual hierarchy and overall layout so the dashboard feels more informative and easier to navigate.
As we continue working to commercialize the Zap Cooking experience, these details matter.
🍽 Closing
This week was a reminder that building the product is only part of the work.
The other part is helping people see it.
Helping them understand it.
Helping them care about it.
Helping them find themselves in it.
That is the stage we are in right now.
More signal.
More clarity.
More growth.
Food. Friends. Freedom.
— Seth
