Four Types of Lightning Wallets

In this discussion, “Lightning wallet” is used in a broad sense: any wallet that can send and receive Lightning payments is considered a Lightning wallet.

1. Lightning node wallets hosted on servers, such as Alby Hub. These typically have frontend wallets like Alby Go and Zeus. In this setup, the Lightning node runs on a server as the backend, while the phone wallet is just the frontend user interface, calling the backend Lightning node wallet. This is the most native form of a Lightning wallet.

2. Lightning wallets that run a Lightning node on the phone, such as Phoenix, Blixt, Breez, and Zeus (Zeus now functions both as a full mobile Lightning wallet and can also connect to a server-side Lightning wallet purely as a frontend). These wallets often rely on an LSP. Unlike a server-based Lightning wallet, a mobile Lightning wallet cannot remain online continuously.

The two categories above are native Lightning wallets, where users open and manage their own Lightning channels.

3. Submarine-swap / nodeless Lightning wallets: Cashu Wallet, Aqua, Spark Wallet, Ark Wallet, Muun. These wallets do not require users to create channels. Users send and receive Lightning payments via the service provider’s channels, and BTC is stored as Ecash BTC, Liquid BTC, Spark BTC, Ark BTC, or on-chain BTC, rather than LN channel BTC.

4. Fully custodial Lightning wallets, such as Wallet of Satoshi (which now also supports Spark Wallet).