Bro you gotta check out Phoenix and Zeus.
I use them regularly.
Literally any question at all, let me know. Self-custodial LN has come a long, long way. And there's indeed a long, long way to go. But I love the progress so far.
Discussion
I’ve used Phoenix. I heard that it’s not the best for privacy because of the way the infrastructure is setup. Idk what the details are. Zeus seems to be a lot better but lightning is just a pain in the ass in general. Waiting for a simpler solution.
Yeah but it's a pain in the ass that's worth enduring for me.
It was initially annoying, much like anything new that you have to learn and get used to.
But once I started understanding how things work and worked out my ideas setup, I started loving it.
Also, the state of privacy won't be the same as it is right now. Haven't been as dialed in as usual because I'm temporarily deep into the political and economic rabbithole nowadays, but the following are developments to keep an eye on
PTLC's, blinded paths and bolt12 are some of them, trampoline routing.
(Not making any comparison here with other networks, since I only keep track of what's happening with Bitcoin.)
And taproot adoption in lightning would also be quite an improvement in privacy of course. Zeus already lets you open taproot channels