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Trey 2y ago

Embarrassing failure of an orange-pilling last night.

I was at a neighborhood party and a neighbor asked me about bitcoin. We talked for a bit and he asked me how to get some. I said I'll send you some right now and you can send me cash via zelle.

I tell him to download Phoenix wallet. So far so good. I fired up Strike, loaded up $100 and tried to send. Failure #1: the $100 apparently needs to clear before I can send it anywhere. First time that's happened to me and I use Strike somewhat regularly.

Ok, no problem, I'll just send it from my node. So I fire up nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 , scan the QR, and hit send, and it spins.....and spins......and spins......and spins......and then times out.

No indication of why it couldn't complete before timeout. I have plenty of overall outbound capacity, and no trouble connecting to the node. I guess my set of channels aren't well enough connected or the outbound capacity isn't in the right channels. Failure #2.

So at this point I'm really starting to look like an asshole.

Final attempt, I guess I'll try sending on chain from my node. So I ask him to switch to an on chain address and send the sats...success! Well, only on my side.

Phoenix gave him no notification of receipt and the balance didn't show up in his wallet until after it was confirmed. Failure #3.

Needless to say, this guy is probably not too impressed.

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Discussion

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Ralphie from Dutchland 2y ago

Yeah, non custodial orange pilling shouldn’t be this hard.

But it is, I have similar experiences

ed
ede3d957... 2y ago

Just use a coin that aims to be digital cash like XMR. Of course sending digital gold is more cumbersome than digital cash because of certain design choices. Also non-custodial LN is not ready for adoption outside of our bubble.

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Karbon 2y ago

SATS cards have worked best for me

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Trey 2y ago

Satscards are cool, but for someone's first experience with bitcoin?

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Jonathan 2y ago

I think I’ve had the most luck with cash app and breez combo. I keep some sats in both to send to newbies because a lot of people already have cash app and I’ve never had an issue with breez, but I’ve had transactions fail on just about every other lighting wallet.

Strike is great if I’m orange pilling people from Mexico. Although just The other day I was trying to download it for a guy from TJ and we couldn’t find it on his phone.

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ZEUS 2y ago

Which backend were you using with Zeus?

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Trey 2y ago

It's an umbrel node. Is that what you mean by backend?

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Sovereign Matt 2y ago

This is why we need #BIP300

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Trey 2y ago

How does that fix the problem?

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Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Better UX in terms of non-custodial wallet adoption via scaling using trustless side chains

Issue with UX with non-custodial lightning like you experienced is that it requires opening a channel and a back up custodial wallet incase the transaction fails. Which makes onboarding to non-custodial ln wallets confusing for most people.

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Cypher Rex 2y ago

I am sorry, I have to say this. I know there are many maxis here. Next time send them #Monero. Cheap, instant, secure, private, non-custodial. They will learn to use #Bitcoin later to store wealth. 🙂

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Trey 2y ago

Ha sorry never gonna happen dude.

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Cypher Rex 2y ago

Unfortunately lightning network is crappy :|. I wish it was better, but simply it is not. Hopefully with future second layers we are going to have better usability. On chain transactiona are perfectly reliable and dependable but it is quite shameful to send 100$ and pay 1$ in fee with money that we present as a liberation from an unfair system.

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Saberhagen The Nameless 2y ago

Most only learn when burned

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VikiSecrets 2y ago

LN still needs more capacity, especially >$100 amounts are difficult to route, but with increasing adoption it will get better I hope.