Nostr Web Client

So, functionally it achieves similar results for a users of a specific node/mint and node to node, but with additional anonymity.

Meaning the mint knows how many ecash tokens have been minted (from its own mint) but not necessarily who holds those tokens?

But from node to node, that transaction still happens over lightning?

Mr Example 1y ago

Not just anonymity, no authentication system. Ecash is the only way to transfer Bitcoin value, with no record of the transfer taking place.

You can't transfer Bitcoin on-chain if you can't connect to the network to broadcast your transactions to miners. You can't transfer Bitcoin via lightning unless your node can connect to my node either directly or routing via other nodes.

You can transfer ecash to me via nostr, email, homing pigeon, Morse code, and I think someone has even done it using sound over a meshtastic network.

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Discussion

GrumpyGardener 1y ago

Yeah... I have a lot to learn on this. So the tokens transfer peer to peer and are then redeemable from the mint in Bitcoin (or lightning)?

How would another mint know that the tokens issued from my mint are valid? I was under the impression that mint to mint is basically a lightning transaction.

Mr Example 1y ago

There's no mint to mint transfers in any way. Mints don't communicate with other mints, ever. Mints don't care if another mints tokens are valid or not.

Mints only do two things. They mint tokens after receiving a lightning payment. They melt tokens after paying a lightning invoice. The mint doesn't care where the lightning invoice has come from. And the mint isn't actually paying the invoice, the lightning node providing the collateral does. The mint only gets confirmation that the invoice has been paid, then it melts the tokens.

It doesn't matter to the mint if the lightning invoice you give it to pay is from bitrefill or another mint. It's just a lightning invoice, nothing more.

It also doesn't matter to the mint what you do with the tokens, it doesn't track them. The mint only knows if they've been redeemed, not who redeemed them.

When you redeem an ecash token, the mint just confirms that the tokens are valid, it doesn't know who they came from. Whereas a lightning payment, always discloses the node ID where the payment came from.