Nostr Web Client

Can someone who has used alby hub for a self hosted lightning wallet please explain from a technical perspective these questions?

What is the absolute bare minimum bitcoin amount required to get started with Alby hub?

What happens to my bitcoin once I have sent the required bitcoin to alby hub to open my lightning wallet channel?

Do I earn satoshis like I would having a regular lightning node with Electrum?

Is it possible to take bitcoin off the lightning network once in alby hub and transfer it into a cold storage wallet for a long term hodl?

Does using Alby Hub expose my IP address, or have any other privacy leaking information that I should take measures to protect myself from?

#alby

#albyhub

#asknostr

#bitcoin

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Discussion

Chriso🇺🇸🇦🇺🦘⚡️ 1y ago

The bare minimum that you’d need is based on what you plan to use it for. This will determine your channel size. I have a channel that’s roughly 300k sats that I use just for zapping

And have no issues. The channel size needed may be dictated by your channel partners rather than what your intention is. The first action you take on Alby Hub is to open a channel. This can be with one of their Lightning providers, an independent node, or your node if you more than one. Maybe research this at the Alby Hub site. Se below for a better idea and how I run my Hub.

When you send your sats to Alby Hub, they will be used to open a channel and then you can spend them.

I don’t think you can go directly from Alby Hub to cold storage. I think this would have to be done via some other wallet.

If self hosted and only one node, you won’t earn sats since the transaction either starts or stops at your address. If you were running two nodes, the Alby Hubs only entry/exit point what the other node (using it for liquidity) you would earn sats on every transaction on the liquidity node.

Can’t answer about the ip address.

Good luck. Alby Hub is pretty cool. Give it a go. nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm

BitTiger 1y ago

This answered some of my questions. Thanks.

However, I would truly appreciate an official response from #alby for #albyhub. I keep getting inconsistent anwsers everywhere and I am confused.

Corey San Diego 1y ago

Chriso has most of it. Regarding IP address, it's their server so peers only see their IP. Alby can see yours when you connect to them, but if you use a vpn they wont see it.

You can swap lightning to on chain (cold storage) with a service like boltz.

I wouldnt waste time trying to earn sats by being a routing node.

Nostr Reviews 1y ago

I have heard Aqua is also a decent tool to use for swapping from lightning to onchain or vice versa. If I wasn't focusing on reviewing Nostr apps,I might go review it.

Maybe they'll add Nostr integration one day and I will be able to count Aqua as a Nostr app.

Corey San Diego 1y ago

Aqua uses boltz apim

Chriso🇺🇸🇦🇺🦘⚡️ 1y ago

😂😂😂😂

Why #asknostr if you just want an official response from nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm

Couldn’t help myself 🫂

BitTiger 1y ago

Meh, tried reaching out before. No response. Hoped that it might get their attention if enough people boosted it. Really grasping at straws.

Corey San Diego 1y ago

How did you reach out?

BitTiger 1y ago

Directly though another account that no longer exists.

Corey San Diego 1y ago

What medium? Nostr DMs arent used by a lot of people.

BitTiger 1y ago

BTCforPlebs 1y ago

Are you talking about hub self hosted, or hub the cloud?

BitTiger 1y ago

Self hosted

BTCforPlebs 1y ago

When your self hosting, it simply integrates with the channels that you’ve already opened with your lightning implementation (LND, LDK, etc. ) You don’t have to open any additional channels to run the hub software and use its features

Alby 1y ago

Hey ittiger, thanks for these questions.

1. No minimum, you can install it on your desktop and try yourself. We recommend opening channel of minimum 250,000 sats for it to be usable, cost of such is ~5,000 sats.

2. When opening a channel, your bitcoin become spendable capacity on your lightning channel - meaning now you can use them over the Lightning Network. Opening channels incurs fees - onchain transaction fee for opening, reserve for closing and a fee to LSP if you are using them. Alby does not charge any fees.

3. Yes you can earn with routing, and set fees per each public channel. however the Hub interface is not optimized for advanced routing configurations

4. Of course it's possible. When you close channel, spending balance falls to your onchain balance. You Alby Hub after all is also a bitcoin wallet, you can see onchain balance on the interface, can withdraw sats from there and you are the only owner to keys to that wallet.

There are also swap services out there that enable exchange between onchain sats and lightning sats for a small fee (sometimes it's cheaper than channel closure)

5. Alby Hub loads some data from remote servers (like bitcoin price), and using NWC requires using our relay. All can be configured to use your own, you can also unlink Alby Account and not use NWC to limit any information sent to Alby, but that will limit some services.