Theyâre kind of a mixed bag in my experience.
Iâm self-hosting an LND node and AlbyHub provides a nice LnUrl endpoint for it, allowing me to receive inbound lightning transmissions via a custom address (e.g. anon@anon.dev)
If youâre planning to self-host, setup of AlbyHub is very clunky and error-prone, at least with their Windows version. Click the âNotes and Repliesâ section of my profile and scroll almost to the bottom and you can read a long reply of mine that details some of the problems youâll face. Some are minor, but others can be show-stoppers if youâre unaware of them.
They use way too many CAPTCHAs, even for simple things like changing common settings. That alone caused me to avoid playing around with the product beyond what was absolutely necessary for my use case.
Also, see my post from 8/13 regarding the issue of Alby monitoring and logging every single transaction going through my node, even those that donât require the use of Alby, and sending me an email about those transactions. Right now, on Albyâs email server, sits a record of every Lightning transaction Iâve ever made. Since Iâm just testing and playing around, I donât care. But for production use it would be a deal-killer.
If you read Albyâs reply to me, they say thereâs a way to limit what Alby can see on your node. They even provided a screenshot. That screen is nowhere to be found, unless itâs hiding behind one of their endless CAPTCHA puzzles and I just missed it.
To be clear, the Alby team seems to be a good bunch of guys and I donât think theyâre trying to pull a fast one on anyone. I think they genuinely care about the Lightning ecosystem and want to participate in growing it. But there are trade offs with privacy and usability to consider, so itâs up to you as the user to decide what youâre comfortable with.
