LN stuff is payments.
Bolt12 is arbitrary data on LN, may as well be jpegs on chain.
We'll let Nostr handle arbitrary data.
Discussion
bolt12 is a lot of things, sounds like you don't like one aspect of it. from what I can tell that concern is pretty overblown due to limits on packet size? the benefit of fetching invoices behind nats natively on lightning without tls/web tech seems pretty useful.
I don't like many aspects, it was completely contrived from a lack of principles by the minor implementations pushing the mobile node fantasy.
Even if I didn't care about jpegs on Lightning:
- The performance/reliability are a non-starter
- It doesn't do bi-direction for commercial applications
- It puts the concern at the wrong layer, the payments layer protocol versus the Line-of-Business Application
- My underlying principle is that Lightning is the native money of the internet, so things MUST work in a browser
(but not reliant on on that web tech you can still QR code a noffer with just a relay ip and node pubkey)
- If you want to add functionality, the SDK doesn't touch your underlying node implementation or the BOLT specs and can work with any of them
Nostr offers checks all those boxes, with the added benefit of having an identity layer that can be optionally leveraged along side it.
1. what are the issues with performance and reliability? socket perf with noise is better than tls
2. bidirectional comms are supported via a persistent lightning connection and bidirectional packets. commando is and example of this
3. is this really a big deal
4. it does work in the browser, i have demos (like lnlink.org) that shows fetching invoices over lightning (bolt11 ironically)
i think nostr is cool, but making that a requirement for all lightning applications seems wrong
1) It mimics Tor, each hop is added latency and failure probability, whereas Nostr being a web server is the same performance people expect from any website
2/3) Bi-direction needs to be at the app layer if its to be used in commerce, payments often have additional context... you're not firing the zap receipt from Lightning for example
4) That appears to be a middleware plugin to talk websockets, since the browser requires websockets... nostr is just json and websockets already