The reason why I resorted to Alby in the end, was because the whole Lightning on self-custodial premises was too much of a jump, just to Zap on Nostr. I didn't wanna go all in, just to have payments, which don't take forever. I saw Edward with Alby, so I thought it shouldn't be too bad for a couple of cents.

Additionally, self-created channels didn't seem to work & I didn't wanna waste money, even if it's low amounts, just to test whether it works & afterwards still now know, whether it actually works in real life with strangers.

Just look at your Lightning journey you shared here. You already had enough trouble too, because you wanted to do it the right way.

I don't wanna waste days of time, just to set up a Lightning wallet, which is technically not even the real deal, as long as it's only the second layer on top of the actual Blockchain.

I'm pretty sure, as long as Lightning is self-custodialy as difficult to setup as now, nobody should complain about Alby or some other service because for most non-techies this is the only possibility to actually use the Lightning layer, at all.

The self-custodial setup is too time-consuming for people like me, who are versed in tech but new to the Bitcoin eco-system & I think almost impossible for any non-tech person, except their hands are held by a Bitcoin Pro the entire journey from having nothing to having a channel, etc.