Oof. I don't know. This adds a layer of asynchronous money transaction, nudges everyone to use e-cash mints instead of lightning (by making it the default), and uses relays as a wallet for all banking transactions.
Discussion
I doubt most of the people getting excited about this even bothered to read how it works. It's a software quality nightmare, in my opinion, as it adds asynchronous transactions, architectural and code complexity, an entire network of servers with redundant (but potentially inconsistent) data, etc.
Relays on top of mints on top of lightning nodes on top of Bitcoin nodes, and always tied to your npub. (Theoretically, you could tie it to a different npub, but that would be completely retarded, as the whole idea is that people are zapping your npub. And forget trying to use the same zap wallet with multiple different npubs.)
Even worse than e-cash wallets on top of mints on top of lightning nodes on top of Bitcoin nodes, which is already a transaction maze that takes occasional money-loss for granted.
1. Relays can't even get follow-lists right, as they are only eventually consistent.
2. Mints can just walk off with the money. They are wildcat banks that can disappear from one moment to the next.
3. Your financial information gets passed around to wallets from developers you might not trust to deliver the quality required for banking services. As far as I can tell, you get auto-logged into their wallet, as soon as you make the mistake of trying out their app.
Every time people around here try to obfuscate novel architecture too hard, rather than putting the effort into making the connections smoother and explaining/guiding better with something like a wizard, it ends up looking like something that's a preface to the next edition of "Software Disasters".
Hard pass.
What’s the solution?
Define the problem, first.
I thought you just did. You weren’t trying to describe the problem?
No, I was pointing out that there are downsides to the solution (nutzaps). I am waiting for someone to describe the problem that this nutzaps solution was meant to solve. So that we can determine if there might be additional possible solutions, and then determine if nutzaps is the best solution for that problem.
One use-case I'm particularly thinking about is using cashu tokens as electronic vouchers, ie relays on top of mints, on top of physical goods or services, and with nut-12 (offline verification), mints could even become obsolete...
Using it as a voucher system, rather than as a monetary transfer, has the benefit of it no longer being a financial transaction and falling out of the direct domain of banking and moving more into coupons.
they are coupons anyway, just like federal reserve notes
Yeah, but they're Bitcoin coupons, not movie-theater coupons or ice cream cone coupons.
YES!
so, i sell bitcoins, i sell vouchers to redeem bitcoins, i sell ice cream cones, i sell ice cream cone vouchers
even if labor cost was in there it's just a commodity
look at the price of eggs right now... i could sell vouchers for eggs, but if i redeem them for more than the promised cost basis of the voucher i'd lose money, so it's the same thing
with these stupid nuts things we have the problem of redemption recourse, they don't even bother to say "will repay nominal dollar cost basis if can't redeem
lol, i laugh in the general direction of people who don't know why a token is less than a unit of a commodity
Everyone who didn't understand Bitcoin 🪙
...and didn't understand Lightning ⚡
...and didn't understand e-cash 💵
...is going to not-understand #nutzaps 🥜
...even harder.
Ecash is a shitcoin that kind of just works and is really convenient until you lose all of your nuts in a minting accident
I think e-cash has a use case, but putting the cash on relays and side-stepping higher-quality wallets by dedicated wallet developers seems very mid. I'd feel more comfortable with it, if the clients all had a selection of solid wallet projects to choose from, that plugin, but they seem to be building their own LOL OMG.
I also think this might turn into transaction spaghetti, for the mints. I don't know if they're ready for this level of confusion in their ledgers, but maybe they've been involved in the development. I haven't been paying close attention.
yeah, especially considering there is still some very base level interop issues going on, and the ecash tech has a huge third party trust issue... i sure af has some trust issues with people who want to run things that give me trust issues, i am usually inclined to describe that as "scammy"