Cheers! Doesn’t have a node yet. I’ll mention those apps to him. He’s willing to read/research so that helps.
Discussion
Phoenix and Breez can both send directly from Lightning to an on chain address using their own swap methods/services, and I think Breez even utilizes Boltz on their backend. Not sure about Zeus, but maybe it can too. Either way, let him know there will be fees associated with the swap process. The boltz.exchange web app is pretty good about making the fees clear up front, which is why I like using it.
Zeus is unlike Phoenix and Breez in that it runs a full LND node on your mobile device. Breez and Phoenix can open channels, but it's handled transparently in the background. Phoenix and Breez don't provide full Lightning nodes. And I may be wrong about this, but I don't believe Zeus uses Boltz for on-chain swaps. I put Breez, Phoenix, and Blitz in a seperate catagory from Zeus and Blixt Wallet, as both Zeus and Blixt run full LND nodes, and the others do not.
This is false. All of these run nodes on your phone. Different node implementations, at least in the case of Phoenix, but they are all nodes on your phone.
What is true is that they give you varying amounts of access in the UI to manage the underlying node. With Breez it’s all through a commandline-like interface, whereas Blixt and Zeus have better UI’s for this. Phoenix doesn’t give you access to the underlying node in the UI as far as I know.
What Breez and Phoenix and Blitz do is markedly different from what Zeus and Blixt do. Can you consider Breez and the like to be nodes? Sure. But they're not full nodes with the ability for the user to open and close channels manually, or obtain inbound from the LSP of your choice. What Breez and Phoenix and Blitz do is more like an automated pseudo-node that operates in the background without user intervention.
They are all nodes and will all work fine for what he’s wanting to do. Each offers differing levels of control over the underlying node in the UI, but each is indeed a node.
nostr:note1tu88euqf2hatp50y8lsc49aq3zah4ze6tft7p2hhth6kuw9nmj6s5dwcfr
The entire point of my original note was pointing out the differences between Breez, and Phoenix, and Zeus and Blixt. And everything I said in that regard is absolutely correct. If your only point is that Breez and Phoenix also run nodes, then fine. As I said, you can call them nodes if you want. I consider them pseudo-nodes. The point you're making is irrelevant to what I've said. Your point is a matter of semantics.