Another newbie question: I’ve connected Damus with Alby. And I’m assuming Alby is a wallet (?). How do I extract the private key to my Alby account?
Discussion
As far as I remember, Alby is a custodial wallet. There aren't any keys for it, which means you don't have to manage keys, but also have to trust Alby to not disappear one day.
I heard nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 are working on having a Lightning wallet for receiving zaps in a self-custodial way — you might wanna try their 0.8 beta version (it allows you to get a node running on your phone and receive zaps without giving away custody, even when offline, via some Lightning Network magic ✨ it also comes with a cool lightning address)
Interesting. So is Alby only functional for Zaps?
Zaps are actually standard Lightning invoices under the hood. If a wallet can zap, it can do pretty much anything else too, like pay a non-zap invoice. The only thing you can't do with Alby is get into the nitty-gritty details of Lightning like opening channels, because Alby manages all of that for their users.
Personally I am not really familiar with Alby specifically, but I currently use a similar custodial solution for receiving zaps as an interim measure, and am currently working on setting up my own Lightning node the hard way to learn the ropes and have full self-custody without relying on external services.
I think Alby can also work with an external lightning node, though I don't quite remember how does one connect them together.
Wow! Trying to digest hahaa so much to learn about the Bitcoin ecosystem. I’m much more familiar with EVM 😂
What a coincidence. I actually also came here from Ether. Honestly I like the community here better — less rugpulls and hypocrisy*, more fun and building actually useful stuff. I was a little bit skeptical of the PoW power consumption, like many were, but it turns out people are already solving these problems by running miners off of waste like vented gasses or purely green energy like hydroelectric power.
* Fun fact: Did you know that Infura, one of the major RPC providers in the EVM ecosystem, only accepts fiat as payment for their services? Tells you a lot about their beliefs, in my opinion. There's much less of that bullshit in Bitcoin space — you can spot a true believer by seeing if they accept Bitcoin for their services. Bonus points if the price is in sats ✨