What I always failed to understand about ecash is that, isn't lighting pretty private as is already? IRS has bounty for both Monero and Lightning last I checked.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-irs-offers-a-625-000-bounty-to-anyone-who-can-break-monero-and-lightning

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LN receiver privacy isn't so great and amount privacy isn't guaranteed from larger nodes.

What is worse, is because of it's increased complexity, a disproportionate number of LN users are using custodians or LSPs from which they have no privacy (just look at Nostr zaps or custodial ln wallet downloads vs non-custodial). That's where ecash can help a lot.

But ecash isnt perfect either. There are still things you have to be mindful about. Larger denominations of tokens gives you reduced or possibly even no anon set (because less users are likely to have those higher denominations for you to blend in with), making lightning payments out of the mint still comes with all the caveats of lightning of course (bad receiver privacy/amounts sent out being known by the mint), and mints can associate tokens with IP addresses so having network level privacy from the mints is a must (Tor/VPN)

I would imagine that Phoenix wallet is better than Zeus because it relies less on custodians right?

The default wallet in Zeus is self-custodial

Don’t you need to choose an LSP to set up the wallet? I remember I couldn’t use the app because I didn’t have an LSP

You can use their LSP if you choose "quick start" and still have a lot more privacy versus other lightning wallets. Idk how long ago you used it but they've added and changed a lot over time.

I’ll try again! If I want to set up a newbie with it, do you think they would be able to figure out how to manage on chain vs off chain when it comes time to sell the BTC for their local currency? They need it for a remittance situation

LSP setup is still self custodial, but it’s optional. You can manually open up channels w any other peer

Both are solid lightning wallets

They're both non-custodial, but Phoenix servers calculate routes for you (more detrimental privacy implications)

https://docs.zeusln.app/for-users/embedded-node/privacy