#asknostr any drawbacks to self hosting via Tor? It feels like a lifehack! I have no clue how I hadn't thought about it yet.
Discussion
The only drawback is the load time, especially if I’m connect to my node via tor to access lightning, I already know I have to boot it early so when it’s time to checkout I can make said purchase
Isn't this what Umbrel or Start 9 do, or offer as an option?
One thing I don't like about TOR is my private data, encrypted or not, being bounced all over the world into countries with zero respect for individual liberty, that possibly share data with 3 letter agencies throughout the world, including Marxist aligned USA deep state actors.
Umm, at any point a node only receives a part of the packet, encrypted, and they don't even know the final destination and source, this is my understanding, or am I missing something? This looks way better than moving my packets through Google DNS.
Self hosting with Tor is awesome, but there's one major downside imo. Someone mentioned load times but that's not it, I don't think the load times are actually that bad.
Cryptographic address spaces require long character lengths beyond what people can memorize easily.
People are used to first come first serve name registries where the character lengths are based on how long of names are or aren't already taken.
I wrote about a possible solution to this here, but it would need a dev to ever happen - nostr:naddr1qqrxuethg389xq3qwamvxt2tr50ghu4fdw47ksadnt0p277nv0vfhplmv0n0z3243zyqxpqqqp65w7fdn8s
I like that Tor works out of the box for remote access for Start9 and Umbrel, but as mentioned by others, the load times can be annoying, especially for Lightning services. Whip out your wallet to show someone how cool it is that you can be your own bank and pay someone online in a flash, only to have to wait half a minute for your wallet to load, have it time out and reload it, hoping it comes up this time...
The potential of Tor's encryption to be broken is certainly a concern. Not knowledgeable enough about their cryptography to know how much of a concern that would be compared to say the likelihood of figuring out a Bitcoin private-key based on the address visible on-chain stored on all sorts of servers all over the world, though.
I should also mention that most of my remote access for Lightning services is entirely through NWC now. At some point I would like to upgrade that to be using my own relay for communication, too.
i just did this w nwc, way faster with your own relay.. legit.
relay.tools relays work for this purpose? Anything special I need to do with my settings to make it work? Right now, only whitelisted npubs can post to mine.
they do yeah, on relay.tools you can add whitelisted kinds in addition to pubkeys. kinds can override. so i added the nwc and zap kinds.
Oh dang... Looks like I will be switching my NWC and probably Amber relay for NIP-46 signing over to my own relay as my project for the evening.
ya i wanna try it with amber too, i have a feeling the bunker will work a lot better that way
Hope so! NIP-55 signing is so good and reliable, but bunker signing can be spotty.
Sadly, it doesn't look like nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qyw8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytf39ehxymewv9hxwctwdyhxxme0qy08wumn8ghj7mn0wd68yttsw43zuam9d3kx7unyv4ezumn9wshszymhwden5te0wp6hyurvv4cxzeewv4ej7qg4waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxgctdw4eju6t09uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwdehhxarj9e3xzmny9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwpexjmtpdshxuet59uq3jamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwdhx7un59eek7cmfv9kz7qpqgetal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqygds4v included a way to customize what relay Alby Hub uses for NWC connections, unless I am completely missing it somewhere.
im using lnbits nwcprovider. it lets you set the relays and/or make a relay multiplexer to handle the nwc.
i want to try albyhub nwc but im still figuring out if i can use *just the nwc with my node
There's a NWC extension for LNBits now? Not seeing it listed in the extensions, unless it is built into one of the other Nostr related ones?
https://github.com/riccardobl/nwcprovider
and then looks like lnbits is in the process of making it official after 1.0
Got it. I imagine I will need to wait until then before it shows up in the list of extensions available in LNBits running on my Start9.
Oh LOL i see nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7cn9wehjumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgjwaehxw309ahx7um5wgerztnrdakj7qpq0npj3gydmv40m70ehemmal6vsdyfl7tewgvz043g54p0x23y0s8qsfwsa6 answered much more succinctly hehe
No its better to build it yourself. wait until V1.0 LNbits comes out and build from scratch on your hardware. I really strongly suggest you do this instead of depending on someone else's build because they will always fall behind.
it can be configured when self hosting through an env variable
Any chance of putting it in as an advanced option in the UI in the future?
that’s currently not planned, because the architecture currently requires it to be set at startup.
Got it. So ssh into my Start9, open the .env config, and I should find a variable there for what relay to talk to for NWC. Edit it, save and exit, then restart Alby Hub and update all of my NWC connections to use that relay? The rest of the connection string should stay the same, right?
yes, check the readme:
also any existing connections will break (as the relay changes) so you have to configure the apps connections again.
I have attempted to use my relay (dikaios1517.nostr1.com) for remote signing via Amber. Sadly still quite unreliable. Sometimes signing requests pass back and forth without issue, other times they just hang up for no apparent reason. Add NIP-46 to the list of things to debug. lol
Doesn't work still need a VPS to host headscale. Tor is the best solution so far.