Oh boy, well we need to go back to 560 BC to really get into... 😉

Nah I'll just paint an example scenario:

You start with a node, channel it up, fund it, use and maintain it like normal.

Then, say you have a couple really good friends, and you often each share or distribute common costs among yourselves. You're close, and all like bitcoin. Node management is kind of a pain, so they never went there, but you have a node already, you're used to maintaining it, might even enjoy it.

So you offer to be a mini mint and spin one up pointed to your lightning node. At this point, there aren't any tokens yet. Then, you set them up with a simple ecash wallet app like #enuts pointed to your mint. You go on and use your wallet pointed to your mint to request some tokens. The mint will generate an LN invoice from your node, and when it's paid (however is irrelevant), the mint produces tokens in your wallet.

At that point, they're just like coins and bills in a traditional wallet. You can split and disperse them among your friends in exchange for covering restaurant bills, travel expenses, anything. Or they can request new tokens the same way you did, with an invoice & a request for fresh tokens. Once you send tokens to someone else and they redeem them, yours are destroyed, theirs are created, and you're effectively blind to what happens to their tokens going forward.

The sats that get paid into your node to request new tokens produce the tokens 1 to 1; the sats that get paid back out when someone wants to redeem the ecash back into sats for themselves destroy the tokens 1 to 1.

Tradeoff to it all: the mint MUST be trusted and honest. In my example, it's a small group of close knit friends, who have a common rapport with the owner of the mint. You can easily swap the tokens to a new mint, but not after a mint goes down for whatever reason. Even then, it could become whack a mole. That limits the scope of this pretty heavily, but for now, I think it's a great step. It makes onboarding a breeze, helps people start thinking in sats, and if everyone knows where the mint owner lives...I mean... 🤷‍♂️😉

Anhway, we'll see where we go from here!