If you're a new Nostrich or recently rejoined Nostr after having your Twitter account suspended, you may not know or even remember #Zapathons - shocking! Well, I gotchu.

What are Zapathons?

Zapathons are unofficial events that happen on nostr which consist of rapidly Zapping as much sats or as many people as possible. The main focus of the event is to have fun all the while stress testing many Lightning wallets and clients across the nostr protocol.

Zapathons organically came about as a way to stress test various Lightning wallets that many users were using. During the early days of Nostr and Zaps, Zapathons broke Wallet of Satoshi and Alby several times each during these events. These stress tests allowed these vendors to make their service offerings more robust and able to handle the increased traffic that Nostr was bringing to the Lightning network.

While Zapathons can occur at any time throughout the day and throughout the week - they can be completely random - most Zapathons happen on Thursday and Friday at 5pm Eastern Standard Time.

You'll find hundreds of people Zapping every single note they come across or they'll be targeting specific notes or even targeting specific individuals. (Zap the devs!) You'll see memes and animated GIFs flooding your main feed as everyone celebrates, produces content to be Zapped, and wants to partake in the fun and excitement.

Some Nostriches like to hold their best memes, GIFs, or even announcements for Zapathons. Posting your content during a Zapathon could mean a healthy boost of eyeballs and Zaps for your note.

All you need to do to participate is have a Bitcoin Lighting wallet and like to have fun. That's it. You can also follow the #Zapathon hashtag for an extra dose of excitement if your own personal feed is a little bland during a Zapathon time period.