There must be a chart which shows what percentage of this occurs non-custodially though. I think recognizing that is important because mostly the whole phenomenon is reliant on third parties.
It's quite concerning.
Discussion
Even with wos gone, I think a large portion still occurs custodially. Mostly because non custodial solutions aren't 100% seamless just yet. They exist and they work great most the time but they have to work great pretty much all the time to see wider adoption. This is probably the case even within the bitcoin community and even more so within the non tech community here. In fact, I'm currently recieving custodially and sending out non custodially.
I think it's a minor problem if we are looking at nostr in a vacuum. Each person has to weigh their own risk/benefit based off whatever solutions they're using. For money and payments in general, from a high level, yes non custodial is important. But I believe there is a line somewhere, in certain situations, where the benefits of custodial solutions (ease of use and setup, no tinkering, reliability and ease of adoption) for the wider non tech population outweighs the benefits of current non custodial solutions and their rough edges. Ideally everyone should always be using non custodial solutions, but the reality is you can't just shove everyone in the deep end immediately.
Custodians can only evade money transmitter regulations so long. That's the main concern in my opinion.
I have given up on sovereign LN. So many frustrations and failures in my many concerted attempts. Years of efforts. Hours upon hours of my scant free time did not end well spent.
Tired of the cheerleading in the context of reality-based feasibility of LN as a solution.
2019/2020: "you can run a sovereign LN node with a raspi!"
You can see how ridiculous and misleading that was now. But some could have resolved to messagemore appropriately from the outset.
I see a parallel phenomenon happening here on NOSTR with zaps.
Yeah that's a fair point. That's why wos left the USA, too big of a target on their back.
I think there is a solution to be had, though I don't know what it is. I hear CLN is much more reliable than LND. Could be something there. In any case, we are (relatively speaking) early days still and I do think L2 solutions are important for bitcoin to scale.
For any solution stack, the base layer should be simple and relatively dumb. The intricate solutions happen on subsequent layers adding use-case specific functionality.
I do agree there's a lot of reliability problems with the current lightning layer. Part of that could stem from so many plebs running unreliable nodes on raspi. But I also think we can't give up on developing and testing (nor get complacent with what we have). Like I said, I think a proper L2 solution is crucial.
I mean, I agree. I just wish the caveats were being put up in front of the benefits which currently exist.
It's a bit of chicken and egg. If someone hasn't seen the "magic" and only sees a massive technical discussion focused on why it's not working.... they'll never try it. And subsequently will have no reason to later advocate for better solutions. Someone presented with this might write off bitcoin altogether because it's perceived as "not useable"
But an admittedly overly cheerleading front could be enough to push someone thru the pain points to at least try it. This is where I see custodial solutions having a big positive use-case. Sure a handful will get disillusioned and dissapointed but at least they tried it. I think the majority will see the benefits and the possibilities and understand its still early tech. At this stage, we introduce the problems... but only after they've been hooked on the potential possibilities. Sure it's not 100% there yet but it can and will be soon(tm). This is how we then build more advocates for better solutions.