Hmm… I’ll have to research this. I have no interest in routing so that’s not an issue. I just want to send and receive. Maybe I misunderstand how it works but I think since the sender has my public node ID, can’t he just paste that into 1ml.com and get my IP? Also, I think if someone wants to send me money, let’s say to nyname@nydomain.com, the LNUrl protocol has to talk directly to my node to tell it to create an invoice, etc., doesn’t it?
Discussion
> since the sender has my public node ID, can’t he just paste that into 1ml.com and get my IP?
Not unless you're a routing node. Nodes only announce their ip address if they want their channels to be available for routing. If you don't have any publicly announced channels, your node won't appear on 1ml.com or any other lightning explorer, so no one can get your IP address from there.
Regarding lnurl, lnurl servers do have to get an invoice from your node, and so *that server* probably knows your ip address (though see the next paragraph). But that ip address doesn't show up in your invoice or in gossip unless you run a routing node i.e. you have at least one publicly announced channel. So if you're not doing that, the sender won't get your ip address; only the lnurl server will (probably -- see next paragraph).
Hmm...I said a moment ago that the lnurl server "probably knows your ip address." But I suppose it's possible to communicate with an lnurl server using methods that protect your ip address, e.g. tor or nostr. Which means now I have a new project idea! An lnurl server that talks to your node via nostr and thus *doesn't* learn your node's ip address. Thanks for prompting the idea!
That would actually be really helpful! As it stands, I have to set up a Cloudflare-hosted redirect for a specially crafted LNurl for my domain. The redirect points to a LNUrl implementation hosted at Alby, so presumably at least Alby knows my IP. It would be cool to cut Alby out of the loop and, like you said, have the negotiation that’s required to create the invoice take place between the sender and receiver via some anonymizing intermediary like NOSTR.