Nostr Web Client

Here's a few reasons of why Monero over Lightning

Usability:

-you need to have sufficiently funded channels to be able to even receive or send to begin with (very inconvenient, unintuitive, and annoying)

-limited in the amount you can send without your transaction failing

-can't transact without both parties being online at the time of transaction

-can be force closed onto the base chain against your will negating the benefits

Security:

-can be rugged if your node is offline

-ability to grief honest users with zero cost

-recent unresolvable critical security issues discovered that cannot be fixed without base layer changes

lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-October/004154.html

Privacy:

-bad receiver privacy, IP is exposed by default, and hidden balances can be discovered by a passive adversary

-centralization of massive routing nodes negates/reduces any help from onion routing

-relies on large centralizing middlemen nodes for succesful routing and cheapest fees (incentives opposite to decentralization and privacy)

Any solution to these so far usually come down to custodians or trusting someone else.

Worst of all lightning isn't even a real solution for scaling bitcoin for all the downsides you take on:

https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/lightning-limitations

__XaristosX__ 2y ago

Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

In my experience until now, I can easily just download muun wallet on my phone fund it with some real bitcoin and start spending using lightning immediately.

So the usability case is not a problem for me at all. Also I don’t think it’s true that you need the other party to be online to receive a payment, I never saw that mentioned anywhere.

As for the security and privacy, it always depends on your threat landscape, I’m not so worried for the ultimate security and privacy as I’m not doing anything illegal. So we always need to compromise between security and usability according to our situation.

But anyway, how do you use monero? Do you buy it directly using fiat? Do you buy bitcoin and exchange it to monero? And after you are done with your private transactions do you convert back to bitcoin, fiat or you keep holding monero? I would like to ask you if you believe that you lose security and privacy at this stage when exchanging back and forth with monero.

Thank you

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Discussion

Saberhagen The Nameless 2y ago

FYI Muun wallet is not a real lightning wallet. It uses submarine swaps and batches transactions on chain. It's cheaper than transacting on chain, but more much more expensive than lightning.

Both parties definitely do need to have a node online to transact with Lightning (if you are not doing it then someone else is running that node for you like with Phoenix or Breez. That means you're trusting them and they also have vision into all your transactions)

Fair, but if security and privacy don't matter to you, and you prefer convenience and usability, why not just use Paypal, Cashapp, Venmo, etc for spending? Way more people use and accept those than lightning too.

-Onramp to Monero directly with fiat noKYC and P2P using LocalMonero.

-Buy it using Bisq - Monero is their largest volume trades by far after Bitcoin.

-Simply swap Bitcoin or another crypto for it using a swap aggregators like trocador.app

-Buy at big exchanges like Kraken if you must, but I don't recommend since they require KYC. But at least once you withdraw they lose the trail similar to withdrawing cash from an ATM.

You can constantly swap back and forth if you want, but I don't do that and wouldn't recommend doing that bc its bad for privacy and also would be expensive to do that all the time.

Only buy the amount of Monero you're planning to use over X amount of time you're comfortable with (just say 3 months worth). The timeline you hold Monero is too short and the amounts are too small to be significant vs long term price action of BTC. For example, all of 2022 if you held Monero instead of Bitcoin during that year you would've made ~2.5x more. I'm not saying to do this, but just an example that these timelines are too short to matter.

Places to use Monero directly:

monerica.com (massive directory)

kycnot.me/?type=service

moneromarket.io

And freenet markets of course

Giftcards and virtual debit cards:

coincards.com

buy.cakepay.com

stealths.net

__XaristosX__ 2y ago

Thanks that was great info!

I’m good with my setup though and I don’t see a problem with the submarine swaps, looks like a very clever way to settle transactions on and off chain! Brilliant!

I don’t see a use case for monero in my life but I’m happy that it’s a tool useful to many people. I’ll be sticking with btc and lightning for now but great discussion! Thanks again