How do tipping and supporting work on LBRY?

LBRY allows you to tip and support your favorite creators using your LBC. You can find this feature by clicking the Support button on content or channel pages. You can also choose to link a channel to a support by selecting it from the channel dropdown. In a future update, this information will later be shown on content and wallet pages so you can tell who is supporting who.

A tip sends credits to a publisher permanently, while also boosting the trust and performance of the content (while active). Recipient can keep it staked or unlock (move to wallet balance).

A support boosts trust and performance, but does not give anything to the publisher permanently - therefore we call it a revokable support. The supporter can keep these staked as long as they like or revoke them anytime via the wallet page.

In both cases, the amount of credits is stored as associated with (staked against) either the piece of content or the publisher channel. Either way, the amount staked:

• Help content perform better in search results.

• Helps content appear higher in the list of top and trending publishes.

• Determines which content is shown at the community-controlled name

How do I send a tip or support?

Sending support via LBRY is easy. Simply go to the page of the content or creator and click “Support”.

Next, you’ll be prompted for the support amount in LBRY Credits (LBC) - you can choose from a preset list of amounts, or enter a custom value. The default option is a tip which goes to the creator when the “Make this support permanent” is checked. If you are on your own content, the default will be a support.

Once you enter a value, click “Send”. A tip will require a double confirmation, a revokable support will not.

Note: This amount will show up in your transaction list and will be deducted from your balance.

How do I redeem my tips?

When you receive a tip, the credits will come into your wallet, and you can see them in your Transaction History. However, since the credits come in as supporting a claim, they will not show in your available balance. See our suggested guidelines on tip unlocking.

To have these credits show in your balance, they must be unlocked. Tips can be unlocked in 1 of 2 ways.

1. Unlocking tips by publish

You can mass unlock tips from a published item using the LBC Details section of the content page.

You’ll have an option choose the amount to unlock, with the default being 25%. Enter an amount or use the slider, and then click Unlock. The remaining LBC is sent back to you as a support on your content.

Please note: Mass tip unlocking may fail if there are over ~500 active tips. We’re working on making this possible! If this occurs, you’ll need to unlock some via the per tip method below.

2. Unlocking tips in transaction history

You can also unlock tips across all of your publishes in your transaction history.

This is done by clicking the unlock icon next to Tip and then confirming your action on the following screen. Once the transaction is finalized, the icon will disappear.

Unlock tip:

Confirmation box:

Revoking a support

Similar to unlocking tips, you can revoke supports you’ve created via the wallet page. Filter on Supports + Active to see the currently staked ones. Click the trash can icon to revoke.

What are the downsides of unlocking tips? Are there any good rules to follow?

While you should never hesitate to unlock LBC you need or want to spend, unlocking LBC does reduce the boost it gives to your content in terms of search results, trending, and discovery mechanisms.

Aside from community-controlled names, which are just a small part of how your content is discovered, the rules about how unlocking tips will affect your content is complicated, and can change based on the overall popularity of the type of content you create. For example, a large amount of tips showing up on a previously obscure publish can mean more than a large amount of tips showing up on content that has received large tips before!

If you’re feeling uncertain, some easy advice to follow is:

• Never unlock more than half the LBC on content that is performing well

• Never go below 10 LBC on a piece of content you want to continue to get views

But these rules are just suggestions and may change as LBRY evolves.