One thing was made painfully clear tonight while nostr:npub1hqaz3dlyuhfqhktqchawke39l92jj9nt30dsgh2zvd9z7dv3j3gqpkt56s, nostr:npub1v67clmf4jrezn8hsz28434nc0y5fu65e5esws04djnl2kasxl5tskjmjjk and I tried to split a restaurant check: Lightning wallets are not even close to being ready for adoption in the physical world.
Discussion
Why not?
Because theyâre generally unreliable. Doesnât matter if theyâre custodial or not if they canât find routes, time out when trying to pay, or freeze for unknown reasons.
What happened? Bad reception?
cumbersome splitting of bill?
Wallet of Satoshi wasnât loading at all.
My Zeus alpha with embedded node didnât complete sync even after restarting, so it couldnât pay an invoice.
My Umbrel node at home is down for an unknown reason.
Muun was being Muun.
Finally paid the invoice using Phoenix.
You shouldnât have to have five wallets just to be able to complete one payment.
Yeah agreed.
I havenât had to pay for anything worth lightning in a situation like this (even at pubkey their system was down so I paid for my drinks in dollars).
Not saying we wonât get there and payment systems have billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours for redundancy built in.
I must say, Iâve had the exact opposite experience. What was the hang up?
You would have had to be there to fully appreciate it.
Hmmm. I split bills with my friends all the time and have mixes between fiat and BTC over Lightning. I have a couple buddies that jump on the bill and then ask for sats from us Bitcoiners. Never had any issues. In fact, I got a couple of them hooked with how seamless and fast it was.
What issues did you hit?
Surely it could be tons of things, but one bill splitting tip is AMP invoices. If you split everything down the middle (and everyone is using LND) you can create one invoice that all your friends can pay.
All of them, dude. We had all the issues.
My node went offline the minute I left home, so that was out of the question. I then tried to pay using Zeus Alpha, but it hung on the âgetting ready screenâ and never updated, so that was out. Wallet of Satoshi wouldnât even load. My last hope was Phoenix, which finally worked. It really shouldnât be this hard. 
How it usually plays out.
Someone hands over their fiat credit card, they then get showered in non kyc sats.
How did you guys manage to fuck this up?
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The wallets wouldnât cooperate! Thank goodness the waiter refused to let us tip him in sats. That would have been so embarrassing! đ¤Ł
You had a bad day, happens with any other kind of service as well. Good thing was you were still able to pay. Weâll make it better with time.
I think itâs important to tell it like it is and not sugar-coat things. We are nowhere near the Venmo level of âit just worksâ yet.
Venmo doesnât work across borders, and even then, venmo goes down due to âinternal issuesâ as well? https://x.com/venmosupport/status/1616928022871044097
Yes, but Iâm not talking about cross-border payments and occasional server outages, which happen to every centralized service at some point or another. Iâm just talking about how it took several attempts using multiple wallets to be able to pay one invoice on a random Tuesday evening.
I understand your frustration, Iâm not saying there arenât problems. Iâm just pointing out that this couldâve happened to you even with venmo on a random Tuesday evening as well, it is a one off event, where none of your lightning apps worked. Lightning however is just a protocol. It does not go down.
If anything I see this as a bad customer experience for nostr:npub1hcwcj72tlyk7thtyc8nq763vwrq5p2avnyeyrrlwxrzuvdl7j3usj4h9rq as a custodial wallet you should guarantee uptime. Maybe publish uptime stats, thatâd give users a lot of confidence. All the other apps you listed a
were self custody solutions which are always going to depend on your hardware,
internet connectivity, and peers youâve opened a channel with.
Lol sounds like you need more wallets! Seriously through OBW (previously SBW) has always been good, sadly think it might be EOL now through. Also the lighting support in electrum is working really well for me now, used not to.
i think you have not experienced malaysian banks (im looking at you bimb, cimb) on payday. hahahaha
One pays the bill. The other two pay him. No? Why does it need to be more complicated than that?
Why are custodial wallets awesome for orange pilling ?
nostr:npub1aeh2zw4elewy5682lxc6xnlqzjnxksq303gwu2npfaxd49vmde6qcq4nwx
nostr:npub1hqaz3dlyuhfqhktqchawke39l92jj9nt30dsgh2zvd9z7dv3j3gqpkt56s
Have something to share!
Good night nostriches!
https://video.nostr.build/deed13bc65543c79264597fb52071237f1313fc560da838a7d7db13d4aa0cfe6.mp4