I would use your wallet if I could use ecash instead of spark. I’m willing to take on the risk for my first 20 dollars.
Discussion
Trying to understand the difference between Spark and ecash in this 20 dollars case. Why wouldn't you use Spark?
Dogma.
Privacy is dogma?
The “privacy” update here refers to Lightspark no longer publishing all user payments by providing an opt-out api for wallet to their public explorer.
But even after this update Lightspark’s operators still see all payment data. A far cry from the privacy of ecash.
Yes, the trade-off being the custodial trust requirement. If you want maximum privacy (aside from what the mint can see), ecash is an obvious choice for short durations. The issue is that novice users don’t understand what mints are, may not move to self custody, and are more at risk of losing funds if the mint disappears without any notice.
Just stating my personal preference as a user.
As a wallet developer using the graduated SDK I would preconfigure three popular mints in the wallet and preselect one.
The risk of being rugged for the first 20 dollars is there and it needs to be explained in the docs. But this setup would make private bitcoin payments extremely user friendly.
Ecash tokens have mint info encoded in them
Graduated wallets move users to self custody with balance increase. User needs not understand what a mint is.
I prefer privacy, open protocols, and no vendor lockin
As I know, Spark works like Bitcoin, it's an open protocol and no vendor lockin.
Where is the Spark Service Provider source code? Without it third party Spark Entities are not gonna happen.
But above all I’d prefer to not share payments data for first my 20 dollars. Especially when I get LDK’s privacy once I open a channel.
Ok, it's all about tradeoffs, but I think most normal people, a Spark kind solution make more sense. Ecash providers will not want to have the responsibility to keep a lot of peoples money and many providers will have an incentive to steal the money if is too much. And if the police finds one provider and arrest them, other will fear and stop providing the service. It's what I think.
Most normal people use banks, fintechs and credit cards. Even if fiat were to disappear and they had to use bitcoin, why would they change to a wallet?
Re ecash providers getting arrested… we have yet to see evidence of all mints shutting down due to legal risks. I would not operate a mint myself but am happy to pay a fee to someone that does.
I would too, but I don’t know how to configure a wallet by default for a user who doesn’t know anything about “ecash”. Give me the mint URL I can hard-code that we’re both confident will still work in a year and I’ll change it.
To be clear, the underlying code already supports cashu as well as spark. I’d absolutely love to change it, I just need a mint URL…
I’d preconfigure three popular mints and preselect one in settings. Then inform users in the docs. It has a rug risk ofc but would also present a massive UX boost for private bitcoin payments.
No, specifically, which one. Please give me a URL and a description of who operates it and why you think they’ll still be operating it in a year or two.
Minibits is as good as any. That wallet also preconfigures its own mint. There is no guarantee it will be around in two years obv.
Then I don’t see how I can reasonably set that as a default targeting end-users who shouldn’t have to have any idea what “ecash”, let alone “lightning” or any other weird Bitcoin jargon means. Let me know when there’s a real mint option and I can use that.
Can the wallet developer preconfigure spark and let advanced users set an ecash mint?
There’s tons of wallets for advanced users to do all kinds of things. I’m not super interested in building another.
Fair enough. It makes sense to have the reference wallet for the graduated sdk use spark. And kudos for demonstrating a native wallet can be vibe coded with the sdk. Definitely a security win over react native. FWIW I hope someone builds a cashu version.
The mint URL is in the Cashu tokens so whomever is sending them sats first would set the default.
Except then you’re building a cashu wallet not a bitcoin wallet. If you want to display a standard receive QR code that every bitcoin wallet can deal with (ie lightning), you have to pick the mint.