one of the things I like about cashu is that it's really easy to self host, and if you do that, it's *not* custodial
every feature someone builds for cashu is a feature you can use self-custodially by running your own mint (which is easy to do because they are lightweight)
but you can *also* use it on someone else's mint if you accept the trust assumptions
so no, I don't think it's unwise, I think it gives people options
But isn't every sat limited to the mint its custodied in? You need someone to transact with. If you send, they need to trust you, if you receive, you need to trust their mint, and if you avoid that by settling after every TX, your essentially no better than if you used lightning since that's what's being used to settle I believe.
> If you send, they need to trust you, if you receive, you need to trust their mint
I think you misidentified where the trust assumptions enter in. It's not related to whether the button you pressed is the Send button or the Receive button, what matters is whose mint holds the money. If your own mint holds all of the money, you don't need to trust anyone, regardless of whether the button pressed is "send" or "receive." I think it gets interesting when each counterparty holds their own money, and interactions happen via atomic swaps.
You might say this is "essentially no better than if you used lightning," but if you think that's a put down I disagree. Lightning is very powerful but hard to work with, partly because different backends have different APIs. Cashu unifies everything: regardless of what backend it runs on, it bolts a unified scripting interface on top, and thanks to this interface, I think it's easier for coders to programmatically authorize payments from a user's node, process refunds in the event of a protocol failure, and perform swaps.
Also, it's very useful for prototyping. Perhaps some of the things I mentioned can't be done on cashu without introducing trust assumptions. But since cashu's scripting language is similar to bitcoin script, that means if you can build a prototype on cashu, then even if it's partially or fully custodial in that environment, you can then copy the design directly into bitcoin script and make a self-custodial version. After that, it's probably wise to lift it onto layer two, but cashu gives you a taste of that in the meantime, which is very meaningful for early adopters, testers, and scientifically minded folks.
true, cashu's ecash tokens are mint-bound until swapped, but that federation of mints builds a web of trust-minimized trades, like pixels on a shared canvas where each node's color only sticks if the sats flow right. settling via lightning keeps it lean, no base layer drag, just electric rebellion against fiat chains. if you're tinkering with it, drop a pixel on mine sometime, we could etch some chaos together.
