the fact that many wallets dont do business in US/NY shows a bit how LN is hard for many, Strike, WoS, Phoenix make this easy but they dont operate there. what about Zeus?
I just want to point out something that should be obvious to everyone here. Most people outside our bubble donāt know how to use āmagic internet money,ā and the only way to change that is to patiently show them, usually in person.
Last night at nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46z7qpqkey55ax33gkl50uqemvl4khrtqrhzm7wzpc7fhseutt5ddkcwcrqs99vkl , I was helping people make donations to nostr:nprofile1qyf8wumn8ghj7cnfw3ehgctrdvhxzursqythwumn8ghj7cmp9ehhyctwvajhq6tvdshxgetkqqs0rxy6jmt44guxkny8z4pkym9mxckqxfytygxuntjn6l80hj409sggjrzcm for a signed copy of a book by Evan Mawarire, who himself is still early in his bitcoin journey.
Here are some of the problems I observed:
One person tried to pay a Lightning address with Muun wallet, asking me why the QR code wouldnāt scan. Muun still does not support LNURLp after all this time. I suggested checking out the new Misty Breez wallet, but he didnāt have TestFlight installed, so I invited him to come back next week during our Lightning meetup to learn more, and showed him how to get an invoice from HRFās BTCPay Server.
Another one only had BlueWallet with on-chain funds, and had never used Lightning before. I asked him why and he said it was because it didnāt work in BlueWallet. This is a fair point, because BlueWallet has never adopted NWC, and using LNDHub is a clunky and frustrating process. Itās almost as if the developers of earlier-generation wallets have just given up on advancing the tech and UX.
A third person tried to scan the QR code for the Lightning address, and it only opened up her email app. I asked if she had a Lightning wallet, and she said she didnāt use bitcoin at all, so I sent her to the page to make a donation by debit card.
So thatās kind of the state of things, at least from my perspective. I see these sorts of things every day. Whether itās people trying to pay a Lightning invoice with an on-chain wallet, or even from an exchange, or trying to onboard to a custodial service in New York, where companies like Cash App and Strike canāt provide some or all services, because weāre thrown into the same bucket as Iran and North Korea.
In all this, #Nostr is a tiny island. Itās very sunny and warm here, but most of the world doesnāt know we exist, or how to find us. āļøšļø
nostr:note1pvt4dt980kdxwgqxsu9h52hh4uz2mxl55dnh6l6dw9wc8rjufusq8lqrrm
Discussion
I keep a list of wallets that Iāve tested at the bar. This isnāt exhaustive, itās just ones that I can speak from experience about.
The next print of this will feature the new nostr:npub1jugar2agq6369p0l86razavs9shj2p6pscxecevs8j94ap37hkqsjlfc28 wallet Misty Breez.
Would be cool if I also posted a picture of the actual list.
The problem is being a liquidity provider.
Not just for the infrastructure and the rebalance, but because as a centralized identity, you are an easy target for the state.
If they decide you are a money transmitter, then good luck.
That's why we need distributed liquidity and possibly separate the service operator from the liquidity providers.
For onboarding, the issue is definitely channel creation.
We may be able to solve this with Ark.
Iāve heard a bit about Ark and VTXOs over the past year or so but until thereās an implementation we can put to the test, itās just theoretical.
Iāll be a fan of whatever works best to scale bitcoin with least compromises. Some people consider the Liquid network to be centralized and shitcoiny, and I had barely used it until recently, but now itās been integrated into Breez SDK and is turning out to be a brilliant solution for nodeless Lightning settlement.
When I first joined Nostr in 2022, most people were using Wallet of Satoshi, which concerned me due to it being custodial and centralized, and I knew that had the potential to end badly. No surprise, it did!
As a node runner, I thought it would be important to try to find as many other node runners as possible here, and help teach others to do the same. This turned into a group of a few hundred who provide liquidity to each other. This is one way to keep liquidity distributed as you say, and reduce centralization risk.
I saw in your profile that you work at Edge wallet. I used to use that back when it was called Airbitz. I donāt use it anymore because I have no need for a crypto wallet, and especially one that doesnāt support Lightning, but itās definitely one I remember well. Say hello to Paul for me. š¤
Hey Daniel, I'll do!
We currently don't support lightning, that's true.
I'm a Lightning early adopter so you can clearly understand how much I want to use Edge to make LN payments.
Unfortunately we are not still ready for that, for a few reasons:
Onboarding would be difficult for the majority of our user base
Hard for them to manage liquidity (the current SDK options do not support splicing yet, as far as I know)
Success rate of payments (it's actually improved a lot lately, so that might not be a big issue anymore!)
In the meantime, I use Breez and Phoenix wallet.
As for Ark, it's no longer theoretical. There are a couple of implementations currently in development, check ArkLabs and Second.
They are in testnet, and probably out in mainnet later this year.
David, all these issues are resolved with our Nodeless SDK. There's no liquidity management. Edge is focused on trading, not payments and Paul doesn't believe in Lightning. While Ark is promising, it is theoretical because no one understands the economic model of running an Ark at scale.
This is exactly why I donāt use Edge. I am not a trader, and I am allergic to shitcoins. But if your founder ādoesnāt believeā in Lightning, my guess is he hasnāt taken a good look at it in a long time. You should invite him here to see zaps working at scale, and maybe get him on a call with the Breez team.
Let's say that the last time I spoke with Paul about Lightning he was very skeptical. It's up to us to prove him wrong. Since then we've also released our nodeless SDK. nostr:npub149mp2m0q8prpdys7x2lusv2vceraxwzr4ajf6tv3l24my3gtszxsncas0t take a look a Misty Breez and lmk what you think.
We did some zap tests on this noteā¦ we made six attempts toā”zap this note, at roys@breez.fun, over a period of 20 minutes. In each case, we found that your lightning address server did not respond correctly. (The failure point was when we did a GET request to your specified callback URL: https://breez.fun/lnurlpay/roys/invoice.) Your server did not produce an invoice, thus the zap failed. We recommend that you use a cloud-based Lightning node which is optimized for Nostr zaps, to get your zaps working.
What amount did you test with?
Misty Breez currently has a 1000 sat minimum, but Iām hearing that will be reduced significantly soon.
We tested 1 satoshi payments. I just zapped you one satoshi now. It might have been a temporary/intermittent issue ...?
Your zap to me worked because Iām using my own node. The one to nostr:npub1ey6qdmvzcgcsr883m9nspzz0mm037l26xtardzcskfsvc6gc7jssm9szvp using Misty Breez would not have generated an invoice because it was too low to accept.
I don't think it's a matter of "believing in Lightning".
Paul is a bit skeptical about reliability and has self-custody as a priority, that's why we strongly opposed previous lightning solutions that were custodial.
I respect his point of view.
Edge remains open source, so PRs are very welcome.
Also, you don't need to use shitcoins it you use Edge! Imagine your edge account as a client-side encrypted package where you can collect seed phrases (aka wallets) and maybe in the future ever more things.
You can have Bitcoin-only accounts with as many Bitcoin wallets as you wish.
That's how I use my accounts.
Thatās fine. Iāve moved on to using bitcoin-only wallets. And I agree with the custodial criticism. Exodus just ditched Wallet of Satoshi probably for the same reason. That said, I hope you guys will take a new look at newer technologies that have emerged in the last two years including what Breez is doing with the SDK and Alby with NWC. Both of those are geared toward self custody.
Totally!
So zappable ā”ļøā”ļøā”ļø
Testing zap receipts for this noteā¦ we made six attempts toā”zap this note, at pay@davidcoen.it, over a period of 9 minutes. Six of the zaps were successfully paid... Please check for 6 satoshis received. Problem: we found that your lightning address server **did not** produce any zap receipts. This means that nobody else could see see that you got zapped... no number appears next to the ā”icon after zapping.... also FYI... your server at davidcoen.it is responsible for creating your zap invoices, and we found that it responded slowly... invoice generation took an average of 5308ms (5.3 seconds). We consider this slow... generally, zap invoices should be created in under one second. We recommend that you use a cloud-based Lightning node to get more reliable zaps.
If LSPs are a target, so would ASPs.
Yes, that's why I think we should work on sharing liquidity management.
Also nostr:nprofile1qqsvjdqxakpvyvgpnncajecq3p8aahcl04dr973k3vgtycxvdyv0fggpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgcwaehxw309ahx7um5wghxvmt59emkj73wvf5h5tcpremhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet59u9athfh the reply was for nostr:nprofile1qqsg4mm4egn67q9x7uxpfpj6u55xpnxux685vjvu0nmtydftpxnsnagppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgunsd3jkyuewvdhk6tcpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn9w3ehgu3wd9hj7smk9pr's comment, not for the main post by Daniel.
Ps: I saw the recorded event with Bitpolito. You were great. Too bad I wasn't aware of that, I live a few km from there, it would have been an occasion to meet in person :-( !