Nostr Web Client

In case anyone is still confused about nuts or what it means and why we always talk about it (me today haha), here is my know-nothing dummy explanation and why this is a big deal IMO:

Cashu is an ecash protocol(is this correct?) created by nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg

People are calling them nuts because cashews are nuts... get it?

The terminology is irrelevant. They can be called tokens, air, water, chicken teriyaki.. it really doesn't matter! What matter is that this is a Layer 3 payment system that transfers tokens at the speed of light (or so I think). Lightning being layer 2, and bitcoin being layer 1.

The reason why this is a significant development is because now everyone has a cashu address. Thanks to amazing work by the legendary nostr:npub1mhcr4j594hsrnen594d7700n2t03n8gdx83zhxzculk6sh9nhwlq7uc226 , if you go to npub.cash you can see that you already have an address to receive these layer 3 tokens, which just happen to be easily redeemable into lightning. This means that any new person who joins nostr automatically has (custodial) layer 3 payment access, which can swap into layer 2 and into layer 1 and into fiat if need be.

I don't know any of the underlying mechanics of this, I am not a genius like nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg and what I have described could be incorrect, but it sure feels like this is roughly how things work.

Nuts are custodial, meaning a mint is holding your balance and can look up your npub to see if you have some. Once called upon, these nuts can be sent to another nutter (cashu wallet) or directly to a lightning address! This interoperability makes everyone a layer 2 user. All we need is a clever UX toggle / button / terminology to make it really obvious.

IF this were to be turned into a library that devs could include in their client code and "it just works", THEN it could be a game changer! No more directing people on how to get a wallet right as they join. They can experience the magic of bitcoin indirectly via layer 3 > layer 2 transfer all without knowing anything (as long as they can get on nostr).

In practice, this means anyone joining an audio nest, a zapstream, a flare.pub can automatically get paid. Yes, it's just tokens, and yes it's centralized and custodial, BUT, they see the value instantly and are only a click away from digging deeper. It's a STEPPING STONE that makes it significantly easier to get onboarded into the new paradigm.

I have not been this excited since the discovery of nostr itself! If I'm mistaken somehow, or don't understand things correctly, please let me know and forgive my dumbass 🤣 And if this means what I think it means, then let's make magic happen!

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Discussion

15Grepples 1y ago

Wait…we aren’t just nutting all over nostr? Oh no….brb.

eee8f902... 1y ago

Do you know, what kind of rugging abilities does the mint have?

Can they steal or use your funds, or can they only rug you by say shutting down the mint (resulting in you losing tokens).

This is the part that im unclear on so far

HoloKat 1y ago

A question for nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg

I think ecash should be treated as cash - you never want to carry too much of it around, and certainly not store it with a custodian.

I imagine a mint can take all the nuts if it wants to just by shutting down, this is why it would be important to have trusted mints, perhaps mints tied to trusted clients (popular client having its own mint).

If possible, you'd rotate which mints people are assigned as they join so you don't have a concentration in a handful (make the rug less painful).

But for the most part, it would be on the part of the UX designer to ensure people know not to keep any significant nut stash for too long with a custodial mint.

a1c19d09... 1y ago

This is really good explanation, I’d like to add that cashu is the money. To clarify, when we use onchain funds, then our “wallet” does not hold any coins. Instead wallets actually only sign coins (utxos). On the contrar, mints who issue cashu literally provide you the money. So it’s as if you receive a dollar bill from them, therefore you can store it wherever you like. However, if you want to spend that exact bill, t hen only the same mint that originally issued the cashu will redeem it, because they blind signed it in the first place. So despite the cashu being the money (a bearer token), users still have to trust a mint for them to spend it it the future. Luckily, the cashu project is already working on proof of reserves and other features, similar to those that nostr:npub1r0rs5q2gk0e3dk3nlc7gnu378ec6cnlenqp8a3cjhyzu6f8k5sgs4sq9acpointed out, like swapping tokens between mints or not trusting only one mint, or only trusting a mint run by a local community

calle 1y ago

Absolutely 💯 spot on

calle 1y ago

A setting like "I trust this mint only a little bit" to limit the balance on a particular mint would go a long way.

calle 1y ago

The mint can shut down and rug at any moment. It can't really rug any individual user of the mint though.

eee8f902... 1y ago

Gotcha, so a bad actor mint cant spend my nuts?

calle 1y ago

No, but your Bitcoin ⚡

ARVIN 1y ago

https://bitlyrics.co/transcripts/cashu-for-bitcoin/

NoGood ✌️ 1y ago

Thanks for explaining! Tried to claim a username, not sure if anything happened haha

HoloKat 1y ago 💬 1

you don't need a username, it's more of a novelty. You can get nuts directly to your npub, here, I'll send ya some now.

NoGood ✌️ 1y ago

I know but thought it was cool to have one anyway 😉 Thanks for nutting, sir...

Jer 1y ago

I’m still very confused on how to send and receive.

HoloKat 1y ago 💬 1

Don't worry, you are EXTREMELY early to this. Currently it's being developed as we speak and is literally a testing ground for what can be. All of the UX will improve massively over time I think.

To receive you can just share your {npub}@npub.cash or claim a username so you can do something like jer@npub.cash and people can send you that way. You also have a public page you can share. If you register a username you can be npub.cash/pay/jer See mine here: https://npub.cash/pay/karnage

To spend, you can send to another address just like yours, or to anyone with their npub@npub.cash

As I said, the UX is rough because no client has any buttons for this at the moment besides 0xchat I think. That's how early we are.

Jer 1y ago

Thanks for the reply. I’ve been playing with eNuts (feels interesting to say) for a a week or so. I think this is great and look forward to watching it grow. I’ll send you some nuts as a test/thanks.

xiangcai 1y ago

we need ppl like you to tell more about this great thing in a non technical way🫡

a1c19d09... 1y ago

Good write up, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a layer 3. Since mints simply use lightning as connecting tissue. Meaning that, mints have LN channels to settle balances with each other or peers in the LN. User of cashu, can deposit sats via LN and then the mint will issue a token with exactly the same amount in return. This token can then be sent or exchange free d between users literally at the speed of light (since there are no LN routing nodes involved). However, one important thing to point out that you missed is that the token is the money. So the mint does not know what account balance a user has or any payment details. Instead users can store there tokens anywhere or send their tokens to anyone, e.g. via email. As you can imagine, this makes cashu way more private then LN payments. Because users who want to redeem cashu at a mint simply have to connect to it and trust it. Interestingly, the mint will not know where this cashu came from or who it was issued originally to, since mints blindly cashu when issuing or authenticating them.

HoloKat 1y ago

Thank you for this!

a1c19d09... 1y ago

Sure thing! Correction in the last sentence. ***since mints blindly sign cashu, when issuing or authenticating them. Note that, a mint will only accept a cashu for redemption if it recognizes its own blind signature on the cashu

Timon 1y ago

So now I get what all of this really is about 😅👍

Matt 1y ago

Nostr/lightning just keeps getting better

nostr:nevent1qqsxcwntv9d342ashe5yvyv0fg40wm873jaszt6d2u0209vqz5gkcdqppamhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5pzqx78pgq53vlnzmdr8l3u38eru0n3438lnxqz0mr39wg9e5j0dfq3qvzqqqqqqyu23nph

AU9913 1y ago

It would be epic to have regional based mints run by like a chamber of commerce or something and business could hook up their btc pay servers to it. Someday

Cindy 1y ago

Thank you for this information. I didn’t know/understand this. Still going to have to reread and think about.

HoloKat 1y ago

My pleasure! I sent you some btw. If you go to npub.cash and connect with a nostr key manager extension, you’ll see your balance.

Cindy 1y ago

Thank you! I’ll follow the steps and let you know if I have any issues.

Cindy 1y ago

Am I supposed to be able to paste my npub in this box? I can’t paste. When I click “try it” is says Nip-07 or Nip-46. I don’t know what those are.

StarBuilder 1y ago

yes. you captured it well.. "I have not been this excited since the discovery of nostr itself!" Same with me.. I am not getting sleep...! Also, for testing purposes I started running a mint..

Doug Brown 1y ago

But why layer 3? What was wrong with L2?

HoloKat 1y ago

I believe you can have similar functionality with LNBits if i'm not mistaken. But then you have to go to lnbits to log in and try to figure out how to manage that.

If you could integrate with a nostr client, perhaps it would work? 🤷‍♂️

Uxellodunum 1y ago

Every layer makes trade-offs. L2 solved a scalability issue with L1, but it still has issues - From privacy issues, to fees (even if low), to the need to be online 24/7. L3 makes certain trade-offs but manages to further solve some of these by offering pretty much perfect privacy, a PoC for offline usage and actually zero fees.

Just like we needed MACs and IPs on seperate layers, what ecash brings cannot be done inherently on L2.

The end goal, much like the Internet, and is what @Karnage was getting at, is that the user won't even know what layer they're interfacing with because the UI/UX abstracts it all.

The Daniel 🖖 1y ago

More cool toys to play with?

btcschellingpt 1y ago

thanks for that explanation 🙏

agree that cashu and fedi are definitely L3 protocols which make different tradeoffs

personally I'm excited to finahave the time I've been yearning for to play with cashu, nostr, fedi and perhaps help

vnprc 1y ago

Another key feature of ecash is that it's more private than any kind of digital money. The centralized custodian can't track users via the tokens.

Vitor Pamplona 1y ago

Chicken teriyaki nuts.

blockdyor 1y ago

I was exactly searching for something like this. About to write a guide about #Cashu soon.

Minnaar 1y ago

So, digital IOU's?

HoloKat 1y ago

IOUs, tokens, peanut butter, like I said the terminology doesn't matter.

Minnaar 1y ago

IOU's mean a return to trusted third parties...🤔

calle 1y ago

ok, minnaar@getalby.com

Minnaar 1y ago

Yes, my trust threshold is a couple bucks here on Nostr. Let's talk about real money

HoloKat 1y ago

Sounds like. Personal problem. What’s your “real money” amount to?

Minnaar 1y ago

I don't mind IOU/custodial payments under a couple bucks. Any more, and I want the real thing, not an IOU.

Egge 1y ago 💬 5

The beauty of eCash is that you can choose the level of custodianship quite easily. Use your personal mint, your families mint, your appartment complex mint, your towns mint… depending on the level of trust and convenience. Very similar to Lightning custodians, but better.

💯

Eat some cheese 🧀

Eat some cheese 🧀

ecash > Ecash > eCash

See, the 90s are over!

calle 1y ago

Ser, not see! Hahahah

🟠 isolabellart 1y ago

Which mint is npub.cash based on, which URL?

Is there a possibility in the future to link it in NWC to compatible clients in order to zap directly to Nostr as well as receive them?

HoloKat 1y ago

You can already receive and send to nostr. The address is just your npub@npub.cash

I’m not sure which mint, probably nostr:npub1mhcr4j594hsrnen594d7700n2t03n8gdx83zhxzculk6sh9nhwlq7uc226 ‘s testing ground

StarBuilder 1y ago

yes. currently it is connected to minibits.cash. We are working on enabling to pick from any available mints.

Uxellodunum 1y ago

The way I see it, I think it might just play out like this:

Lightning as an L3 for LSP infra and some self-hosters.

Fedimint ecash for custody services.

Cashu ecash for self-hosters and potentially with their own smaller communities.

Inherently, while one might ask why use ecash versus standard sats, truth is, ecash has some advantages:

- More private

- Actually zero fees

- Offline (PoC) usage

As a self-custody maximalist, I too wondered about what ecash could bring to the table but the reality is, given the benefits, if you self-custody in standard LN already, you might as well run a mint too.

If you dont't self-custody, you still have the above benefits and with federated mints there are less chances for rugpulls. I believe cashu also have plans on addressing the potential for rugpulls from angles that standard LN is unable to offer due to inherent limitations.

Russo 1y ago

This is Nuts 🤣🖤💪🏼🤍

Brunswick 1y ago

I look at cashu tokens more like transferable rights to transmit sats from a lightning node.

HoloKat 1y ago

You can look at it any way you like 👍

Marakesh 𓅦 1y ago

So is a mint like a––dare I say the 'b' word––bank?

HoloKat 1y ago

Pretty much

HoloKat 1y ago

It can’t see your balance though

VelvetBlue_art 1y ago 💬 1

Maybe 🤔 Im stupid but nothing layer this layer that, not a single sentence you just typed made any sense to me.

New users will not understand this unless they are a coder.

The Daniel 🖖 1y ago

FiddleHodlHomestead 1y ago

Cashu makes some sense to me, but your post is pretty much how I receive almost all the tech-y notes on Nostr. FWIW, my strategy in the face of new stuff like this is to listen to a lot of folks talking about it until something starts to click.

HoloKat 1y ago

yeah it's not meant for "everyone" to get instantly, just people who are following nostr / bitcoin development.

HoloKat 1y ago

You won't need to understand layer this layer that.. I am explaining it this way because it is required for the explanation but the end user doesn't need to understand it. This is all in early development...

Toshi 1y ago

Which nostr app are you using? Download Primal. In Primal a lightning wallet is already integrated and works out of the box. Until now the best user experience.

VelvetBlue_art 1y ago 💬 2

Fuck Primal.

Toshi 1y ago

Why?

Toshi 1y ago

VelvetBlue_art 1y ago 💬 1

Because I'm an adult worker and the owner of Primal let's cucks report us for nudity and then that affects my note visibility. They were openly discussing that in a note one day. We came here to face less or no censorship.

I use it on PC when I have no other choice. In general it's a no.

Toshi 1y ago

Oh, alright. Didn’t know that. Fair enough

unknown 1y ago

Now I must go hunting for nuts. A lot of nuts!

SBW 1y ago

LAYER 3 MENTIONED

nostr:note1dsaxkc2mr24mp0nggcgc7j327ak0ar9mqyh564c7572cq9g3ds6qxe3nwt

Uxellodunum 1y ago

I've been looking into this and while I'll always seek to self-custody, what instantly struck me as a couple of amazing features were:

- The improvements in custody vs LN custody. I'd rather the coins be lost than stolen, this is a key difference! I'm growingly of the mind that custody has a place, but LN custody always seemed botched. eCash does it properly, your tokens are assigned to you and only you.

- Offline payments.

I'm sure there are more, but still looking into it.

I do wonder though, this effectively makes Cashu a layer 3 protocol - But having LN as a pre-requisite hop will hurt adoption. Can't wait to see direct on-chain to ecash ramps.

HoloKat 1y ago

Technically the user never needs to comprehend L3 or L2. "Get your money" "cash out your money"

Uxellodunum 1y ago

Absolutely, just like the TCP/IP stack, I understand we want to blur the concept of layers as we smoothen out the UX.

My thinking is more in-line with having one layer as a pre-req to another.

Ideally, users will be able to on-ramp directly to ecash for day-to-day spending, Lightning (as in L2) only if they're adamant on self-custody and the timechain for their larger stash and to avoid liquidity issues, but I think Lightning should be an if, not a must. That, or pretty much all Lightning custodians implement the likes of cashu instead.

Otherwise we end up with:

- What's the point of current Lightning custodians if cashu just does it better?

- Is their only advantage at that point the fact that there's less onboarding friction? (one less "layer" to go through)

Evan 1y ago

If someone is brand new to nostr they currently will have trouble using npub.cash because it requires a nip-07. And before you say Alby, that door is currently shut and new Alby accounts are by invite only. And that friend you are onboarding to nostr probably doesn't have their own lightning node either.

Minibits seems to accomplish the same goal (receive address for nostr zaps) but without needing Alby or any other extension. Incoming zaps are converted to ecash (nuts) in the background for you. You can send send and receive sats or ecash (nuts). Not a paid promotion. Just an option for people having trouble getting a nip-07.

HoloKat 1y ago

New person can just get started via nsecapp integration and they automatically have a "wallet". Hence why I said this would be much smoother if it was integrated into clients. You don't need to ask people to install anything.

ManiMe 1y ago

Thanks. I was wondering what that was.

Eluc 1y ago

It is kind of the ln tips bot of Nostr, except you don't even need to sign up in the first place.

HoloKat 1y ago

Yes

Reason13 1y ago

i am the custodian of my nuts

HoloKat 1y ago

You sure are!

max 1y ago 💬 1

Great intro on my opinion!

What would be the steps to get this cashu setup?

HoloKat 1y ago

I am not sure what you mean by set up? If you mean getting paid, just go to npub.cash and use an extension to access your balance. You don't need to set anything up. But if you mean client integration - that's up to devs to do or not do.

max 1y ago

Yeah I meant as a user

Cool thing that it’s already available to everyone on nostr

Looks super technical tho, I’ve been having out full time on ETH space for the past weeks and it’s amazing how well they’ve got the user experience sorted

5c077d22... 1y ago

Check here first

nostr:nevent1qqsxcwntv9d342ashe5yvyv0fg40wm873jaszt6d2u0209vqz5gkcdqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzqx78pgq53vlnzmdr8l3u38eru0n3438lnxqz0mr39wg9e5j0dfq3qvzqqqqqqyfjeha2

Mr.Robot 1y ago

Thank you for sharing.

I'm still studying the subject, but i would like to share some considerations i have not see mentioned yet:

There is no incentive to run a cashu mint node to provide service for others. This happens to when you decide to run a #Bitcoin node, as the incentive is for support the network and have a trusted source of information. With the #LightningNetwork you can operate it as a payment router and get fee from it.

However, the easy onboarding capability of cashu allow cashu node operator to become trusted party for others.

In a family, maybe you are the "tech guy" who can use #Bitcoin and #Lightning easily, but what about your parents, brothers, uncle...can they?

Probably yes with the right training, but this require times. What of you want give money to your son or daughter, but they are too young to understand layer one and two?

With cashu, i can say "you can trust it as long you trust me", be the beacon for friends and relative.

The same concept can be used for small community.

HoloKat 1y ago

A cashu node is just a lightning node and has all the same incentives as a lightning node because it IS one.

calvadev⚡️ 1y ago

💯

Byrger Tidesson 1y ago

does cashu transactions requires a fee too? or do they need it when moving to/from lightning?

Sikto 1y ago

Thanks for the write up! You answered some of my questions.

I see the benefits for new users and people who are not familiar with btc, but are there any advantages of using cashu for those people that are already using lightning, either custodial or non custodial, and are comfortable with it?

mrecheese 🧀 1y ago

My plan is to set up a mint for friends and family. I onboarded some people to WOS right before they bailed on the US app store. Never again. I know I won't rug my friends intentionally, and if I do it unintentionally I can make them whole again. When they get enough sats, they can move to Mutiny, Zeus, or similar.

It's interesting enough to make me fire up my private lightning node again, which is saying something.

Sikto 1y ago

Thanks. I guess this means I need to spend some time trying to figure it out!

mrecheese 🧀 1y ago

I'm doing Start9 BTC/LN nodes and LNBits with the Cashu extension added. It's easy enough as long as your Cashu wallet can access the mint via Tor.

Sikto 1y ago

Thanks!

Damo 🇦🇺 Freedom-tech for the masses! 1y ago

You lost me at the word 'centralized' sorry

mambru 1y ago

(casual onlooker here)

So the difference with custodial lightning is that the custodian (mint in eCash) is blind to the amounts in the database? As long as payments are done within the same wallet/mint, there is no need to hit L2?

I guess fedimints add a layer of consensus on top of it so that holders of eCash don't need to trust a single party?

federico(x) 1y ago

great explanation, thanks! How can I exchange some ln SATs for nuts?