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I need to look into running LNDHub for my friends and family. I don't know enough about how it works. Do I have access to their sats? Are they somehow separated? Can I rug them?

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

> Do I have access to their sats?

Yes, but there’s no standard UI for accessing individuals’ amounts. It’s in a Redis database that you can query. Presumably one could write code to update this database directly.

> Are they somehow separated?

LndHUB accounts are custodial entries in a Redis database. The sats are commingled in one shared Lightning node’s channels. It’s up to you to maintain enough liquidity to satisfy demand of your users.

> Can I rug them?

Absolutely. It is trivial to do so en masse. Just close all your channels and walk away.

Rugging an individual user is more difficult because there’s no UI for it. But the code is open source so developing a script ought to be possible.

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Discussion

Lebanese Hodl 2y ago

Much more thorough answer! Learned from this, thank you 🙏🏽

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

No problem! I looked into this deeply when setting up my family with LndHUB on my Lightning node.

I had hoped to simply credit their balances directly, but there was no obvious way to do that. Instead I had to have them “fund” their Lightning wallets through the Blue Wallet mechanism that gives them an on-chain address to send to.

It’s kind of a bootstrapping problem. Suppose you already have a working lightning node. Now you want to make a Blue Wallet Lightning wallet. There’s no way to transfer funds from your Lightning wallet to the LndHUB account. Paying an invoice fails with an obscure error. I’d have to dig up my notes for more details, it’s been a while. 😅

Lebanese Hodl 2y ago

Haha yes!! I remember trying that too! Maybe us plebs could zap the wallets and we fund it that way 😅

Derek Ross 2y ago

Thank you for the explanations. I think all of the above is fine as you'd be providing a service for your family members or close friends. I'm not going to rug my wife, kids, or my best friends. It's a good solution for them, because they're using something that I'd be using too, something that I'd trust enough with my own sats. They'd rather trust me than an unknown entity. Thanks again.

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

Yes. But also, like I said, you have to maintain liquidity to satisfy their transfer requests (both inbound and outbound). There does not seem to be a good way to tell if you’ve accidentally gone underwater.

For example, say you have one mega channel, balanced, with enough liquidity to satisfy the whole fam. A few things can happen that suddenly make you insolvent:

1. Channel closed by counter party.

2. Family/friend “funds” their wallet with a large amount on-chain, then immediately spends that amount on Lightning. On net you still have the funds, but Lightning liquidity has been drained.

These aren’t insurmountable problems, but there aren’t built-in automated ways handle them or to be alerted when they occur (that I know of).

I tried LnBits as well. LndHUB worked better for me, but I don’t recall why exactly. Would have to check notes.

. 2y ago

Hey Jimbo 👋

Great to see you on Nostr!

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

GM & PV 🤝

. 2y ago

PV dude 🤙