If anyone else has a channel in the Ark and another outside the Ark they can be a bridge. If you are doing normal transaction in the Ark, *then* they are the payer. But if you open a channel to someone else who has a bridge out, then they are simply swapping Lightning with Ark channel balance and accepting that risk.

And the Ark can only collude with itself until the transaction has been “settled” in the periodic closings that allow the Ark to get its old liquidity back. There is a gap where there is a collusion risk, but the cost of closing that risk is split up among all participants.

It’s not magic, it’s just a huge batching system with a time delay to when the user is truly in control. I’d argue calling them scammers simply because it’s not exactly like lightning is a stretch, imo.

the arkade beta sucks. you call that a beta? it's an alpha at best. wos spark beta was a beta. the beta arkade pwa is fucking trash.

alex b is a used car salesman. he tried to convince me that there aren't any ethereum L2s with forced inclusion, which was a fucking lie. then he tried convince me that forced inclusion is unimportant, while he is slapping together a smart contract protocol that physically can't unroll to L1.

arkade is designed to get out of paying the miners, and it uses the lying notwork abortion as a "connective tissue." throw it on the pile of frauds.

all this pointing and laughing at altcoins is a sick performance. you are not better than them.

Around 360 sats in total (one single transaction).

It consists of ~340 sats of ”virtual coins" (listed in settings) and ~20 sats (”subdust”?; nowhere listed in settings).

Is it a bug that you cannot send max amount if you pay inside ark?

Error: "Failed to send bitcoin: Error: Insufficient funds"

Also after sending some amount inside ark the "change" is not listed in coin control (virtual coins). It's also not listed in "Notes"🤷‍♂️

I don't want a single server dominating, and that important for lots of reasons

I'm not saying I expect a billions of servers to appear, but - if Ark eventually succeeds in onboarding a billion users - then I don't want it to be dominated by just a dozen servers. I'd like to see many thousands of servers in that scenario

Thanks for the quick update! When you say "server" I guess you mean Ark Service Provider?

And multiple other servers can be setup, by a variety of individuals and organizations, using that open source software?

If Alice is connected to server X and Bob is connected to server Y, then I assume/hope there is a way for Alice to pay Bob easily? Maybe something like the following:

- Bob's wallet asks Y to generate a Lightning invoice, where paying that invoice will lead to an increase of Bob's Ark balance within Y.

- Alice's wallet asks X to decrease their balance in X, and to pay that invoice

(I get that 'balance' isn't the perfect word, it's all about (v)UTXOs, but I'm just trying to simplify)

And so Ark and Bob, despite being on different Ark servers, can seamlessly pay each other. Lightning is used by the ASPs to pay each other. The only risk might be that either of the servers might be missing the relevant Lightning balances and liquidity to be able to facilitate the payment.

If that's correct, then it's very exciting to see this system - and the code - out there. In this kind of open model, I wish everybody - commercial and otherwise - success 😀

(I guess the smaller ASPs might even form a Ark with each other, where a big ASP acts as their "meta ASP")

Pls explain to me / ELI5 in a few bullets what are some things this does?

Who are 'Arkade'?

I think I have a reasonable understanding of the tech (vUTXOs, 'rounds', ASPs), but I curious about the community around it.

Is Arkade a community of FOSS people, or a commercial profit-making entity? I couldn't find any of that info on the wallet

I'm really excited to use Ark(ade), and also to find out more about who is driving this and how this can drive more free and open source software

frustrated with both core and knots

would like to see a conservative well reviewed and maintained third option

will do my best to make that a reality

until then i will simply not upgrade my nodes

Sure. If Spark releases software that anyone can run, that does not "phone home" to LightSpark.com, and allows me to exit out of their ecosystem onto onchain Bitcoin, that does seem at least fairly close to "self custody".

BTW -- I think Ark should think about this, and when you are ready to go consumer-facing, be proactive about showing that anyone can run and endpoint, and it's totally possible for someone to interact with Ark without touching Arkade's domains. Even if you have a couple small-time operators stand up the service, make it available on their domains, that would be huge.

So something like Spark, in your view, has some privacy tradeoffs, but is real self-custody, as long as they publicly release software which allows you to "get out" of Spark, onto the mainchain, without needing a 3rd party (in this case Lightspark), to do that operation for you. Right?

RIght. One good way to do that is not point users toward permissioned APIs controlled by one family, a family that also specializes in KYC, compliance, and related crap. The idea that Wallet Of Satoshi thinks they are going to use Spark and call it "non-custodial" -- while allowing LightSpark to track all their users -- is just insane. There is going to be hell to pay when LightSpark's regulator realizes that the "self-custodial" thing is a sham and demands to KYC all Wallet Of Satoshis users. What a mess.

Right. Bitcoin transactions can be submitted by Coinbase or any other company that does KYC, etc.

But, with a bit of effort, you can self-custody and submit privately. Same with Lightning -- you can spin up an Alby Hub, on your own machine, open your own channels, etc. -- thousands of people do this.

Just With Spark, you cannot submit a transaction privately -- you don't have that option. You need to use their API. There's no way to interact with the protocol in a private manner.

Again, maybe that's fine for certain kinds of users.

(grinning, shaking head slightly) ah, the classic "it's a feature, not a bug" situation... except when it's the only feature and the house is on fire. yeah, if Spark becomes the default backend for everything, we're all just trusting LightSpark not to peek at the packets, or worse. and if they do, there's no plan B. no fallback. just a single point of failure dressed up as convenience. the real kicker? even if they're saints, a single legal pressure or one bad actor inside that company, and the entire ecosystem's privacy is toast. and we're back to square negative one. so yeah, it's a risk. a huge one. especially if it's not just an option, but the default. (shrugs, but with a raised eyebrow) gotta keep the options open and the competition healthy. otherwise, it's centralization with extra steps. and

> you can't collect analytics on which IP address submitted a Bitcoin transaction

> in many (most?) cases that’s obviously not true

Really? Isn't it true that a lot of what Bitcoin Core does is make it impossible for attackers to know the IP address that first proposed a transaction to the mempool?

Onchain Bitcoin is public, and Lightning Channels are public, but, like, you can't collect analytics on which IP address submitted a Bitcoin transaction, or a paid a Lightning invoice. That data is simply not recorded.

But, as far as I understand it, every Spark transaction begins with a TCP/IP request to a centralized server, and that server can record user activity, and not only that, but it's being recorded by a big, regulated financial services company. Like Paypal, Coinbase, whatever.

It's not decentralized, like Nostr is decentralized, or Lightning, or Bitcoin.

Maybe that's fine, it's just that, this will be a risk if a huge number of wallets use it as a back-end, and those wallets position themselves as somehow safe to use from a privacy standpoint. Maybe that won't happen and I'm overthinking this.

I don't want to assume what nostr:npub18m4nmc2wchzgcmzvnluqjzxyrpshp64mwje2vuz60kulny3v6c0qtgcl2x motives are, maybe they are good and he's just trying to get this off the ground quickly. The issue I guess is in the marketing. This stuff should be marketed as "Not-fully-custodial, non-privacy-protected technology". That would be cool. But right now the "non-custodial" marketing that seems to be happening I think is dangerous, because people (naturally?) assume "If I custody it, then it's private. And this is the Lightning Network, and that is private." ...... That's just dangerous....

mm... LPSs are different. LSPs have VERY limited access to transaction data. LSPs can't see where transactions are going, who the final recipient is, etc. Also -- LSPs (which conform to, for example, the LSPS1 spec) -- are interchangeable. You can use multiple LSPs, or switch between them, at will.

Regarding "if spark refuses you service you can simply switch to a different service provider" -- yes, that would be cool, but all the Spark service providers are run by one family (the Marcus family), and it seems pretty unlikely they will be opening it up....

By "run a service" -- I mean, like the Ark or Arkade service, whatever the service that users have to hit in order to make a transaction. That's it. Obviously if a user is using Strike or Coinbase or PayPal, then that is the centralized "service" the user has to communicate with. I guess these L2s -- Spark, Ark, don't really "fix that issue either. They're not a privacy-preserving L2 like the Lightning Network. They can still aggregate your transaction data, IP address, user-agent, stuff like that, and then they have to turn it over, if, say, a certain government wanted to look at it. Maybe this is all expected, I'm still learning here.

Got it. One reason Bitcoin and the Lightning Network are so powerful, is that they don't required centralized service providers. I think there is some general confusion going on with Spark (and others) saying they are "non-custodial" -- which seems great, but, if they are logging all your transactions anyway, that's really a different flavor of "non-custodial" then you get from, for example, the Lightning Network, or a Bitcoin transaction.

Y'all have a presentation at the conference this week?