Thread

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"look everyone is using custodial lightning so we should embrace that" makes me feel sick. I always thought this was a temporary measure until we had better wallets, TIL the plan now is to embrace it fully for mass onboarding. We're working with a few partners to try an alternative approach. If it fails then it fails, but at least I can sleep at night knowing we tried. Mass onboarding into custody seems like a disaster without a really good non-custodial offboarding plan.

Replies (57)

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↩ replying to npub1geta...0nfm
I thought so 😔 Listen, I don’t know how everything works on your end, but if it is at all possible in the future, I’d gladly pay double in sats over lightning to just get a key on your end and not have any email involved at all. Something like Mullvad does. I love what you guys are doing and at some point might just do as you’re suggesting, but I also feel strongly that email is by and large a legacy point of weakness for both the user and the admin. Keep up the good work! 🙏
What’s the end goal? Easy payment options that just work, complete sovereignty, some mix of the two? I’m personally ok with running my own node, but I’ve had custodial wallets that I kept the amount of sats I was comfortable losing in. Node managing can be a bit of a pain. I’m not sure having someone do it for you for small amounts to zap with is so bad.
This is a ideologically small-blocker idea. We don't have a non-custodial L2 onramp, and until we do, everyday people will eventually have to use L1 or have custodial Bitcoin. There's no third option. *Maybe* drive chains can be LN channel machines. For now, the plan must be to eventually scale L1 so people can establish self custody on L2 to scale the rest of the way, or to forget self custody as an everyday people thing.
↩ replying to jb55
I am sure you are so because you have thought through it, not because it's the party line, though, right? Small block could mean "minimum needed," or "1MB exactly," or something else. What I meant by "ideological small block" is a mindset that the 1MB is a magic number that cannot be changed without making Bitcoin not Bitcoin, something essential to the definition. I am of a "minimum needed" variety.
this is NEVER going to work with lightning. We can hope there will be other layer 2s that can do this, but that might be years till we reach this point. I know you already kniw this, but Here is why it doesn't work with lightning: If you want to receive a payment, you need to be part of the lightning network (eg. you need a channel). Also, the channel needs to have inbound liquidity. So how to get to that point? Easy right? Just pay someone to open a channel to you! BUT HOW, IF YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE NETWORK ALREADY??? Do you expect people, to go buy bitcoin on an exchange, send the bitcoin to their lnwallet, open a channel, rebalance their liquidity, only so that they can receive a zap? I know we love to play idealist, but it's never gonna happen for the normal pleb. The more realistic approach is to just start receiving zaps into custody. Once the pleb learns about self custody and has received enough zaps to open a channel, he can move them to self custody. Why are you trying to build the skyscraper from the clouds to the ground?
↩ replying to Derek Ross
I agree we should make easier abstraction for this. However, people are used to managing outbound liquidity, and linking their venmo or whatever to their bank and debit card, those are complicated things. Managing liquidity is inherent in all of that. The only difference w lightning is literally one step: manage inbound liquidity instead of just outgoing.
I completely agree. We're trying to build solutions to handle the incoming routing barrier with swaps. Utilizes our liquidity and WoS liquidity to ensure routes. I've been using this method for a few months now with 0 routing issues paying for things at @npub1h2qf...w8ch merchants and others
Stack on Lightning, store on-chain! A guide to setting up balanced self custody Lightning Channels for free
A guide to setting up balanced self custody Lightning Channels for free
↩ replying to jb55
You can: - download Alby Hub for macOS/windows , it uses ldk, and have it on your computer. - have it installed on an umbrel or start9, (or linux server with lnd), using the internal lnd node. - self-mount it on your own cloud using docker. - (get the Alby subscription and have it hosted on Alby Cloud) In all of these variants, each one can create isolated nwc subaccounts for friends and family, using Alby Go app. If you want a private onboarding or have a talk, hello@getalby.com