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Great question. We are quite different both in the features we offer and how we operate the business:
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River operates our own custody infrastructure and has our own licenses which allow us to custody client funds. Swan outsources their custody and licensing (previously to Prime Trust, and currently to Fortress Trust). We think it's important to have full visibility and control over custody for the safety of our clients given how many incompetent and/or malicious actors are operating some of these third party custodians. Of course we always encourage self-custody.
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We have zero-fee DCA. Whenever you DCA on River you pay zero fees on those purchases after the first week. Spreads are very tight.
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We support Lightning payments to and from your account
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We support Target Price Orders (similar to limit orders)
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We like to think our app and service are pretty sweet as well
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We put out pretty sweet research like our Lightning Report
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We have a lot of other unique features coming in the next few months. Stay tuned!
I worry about centralization in LN yes.
However, we can't combat centralization by fighting incentives or doing sub-rational things (like peering with subpar peers, wasting liquidity, etc.). We either win (stay decentralized) by setting up the right incentives & building the right tech, or we don't. Altruism is only a method for bootstrapping, not a sustainable model for at-scale networks.
For River in the specific, we do aim to minimize failed payments, and while that requires pruning bad peers, i don't think it's as pro-centralization as it seems. The tech exists or will exist to allow anyone to be a good peer. The main challenge will be whether capital requirements drive centralization.
The same tendencies that keep people away from bitcoin keep some bitcoiners away from LN.
- LN advocates oversell Lightning as infinitely scalable and problem free today.
- Skeptics are impatient for mass adoption and declare new tech dead early, just because it hasn't taken off as fast as they expected.
- LN incentives are more inclined to centralization than Bitcoin's.
- Some may worry that LN will undercut Bitcoin's security budget.
322 sats \ 0 replies \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
At its most barebones, an LSP can just be a regular LN peer that a user has a channel with and relies on for routing & liquidity management.
But yes, logic could be built into/on top of your node to try a payment, and if it fails, retry through a specific LSP. Or, you could have a list of peers you can reliably pay, that you pay directly, and if your destination is not in that list, you use the LSP to access the wider network.
113 sats \ 0 replies \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
LSPs may technically be a middleman, but the goal of the LSP spec design is to minimize the lock-in a user has with a specific LSP. Lock-In and barriers to entry are what make middlemen bad for a system.
Also, LSPs don't just solve an education problem. They solve a liquidity and capital problem: not every human can own a UTXO, open one or more channels, and manage said channels continually.
We have many terms, especially Taproot, Taro, and recent SoftFork proposal related terms, to add to the glossary.
We are actively improving Learn. If you have any articles you'd like to see, terms you'd like added to the glossary, or other ways we can improve, let me know!
Not selling shitcoins (securities) is a pretty big advantage for helping to avoid regulation. The SEC is much more "active" than the CFTC.
340 sats \ 0 replies \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
I don't think laws are the reason people are not transacting with Bitcoin more. It's hard money that's expected (by those who hold it) to appreciate in the future.
Merchant adoption will come when Merchants actually demand Bitcoin, either by giving discounts for those paying in bitcoin, or not accepting fiat. Bitcoin and Lightning UX is only a part of this. The greater factor (IMO) is Gresham's Law and the use cases that only bitcoin can serve and fiat cannot.
146 sats \ 0 replies \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
River is working on a new product to allow clients to hold their own keys and recover their funds without River, all while maintaining a very simple UX and not having to manage liquidity, channels, peers, or infrastructure.
By multisig, do you mean collaborative custody? We don't offer that, but we have Lightning and onchain withdrawals to allow you to withdraw to your own multisig quite easily.
Great Question. River has a strong corporate culture of avoiding seed oils, but we also believe in individual autonomy, so we don't restrict our employee's diets.
362 sats \ 0 replies \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
I don't think liquidity is necessarily always going to be an interesting and complex problem for two reasons. First, the network will gradually become less dynamic as people who transact frequently will establish long-lived and maximally direct connections with one another. Second, tools, algorithms, and data will be available to help non-experts deploy liquidity in an increasingly effective way.
307 sats \ 1 reply \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
That involves you exporting your exact channel states (commitment transactions) and taking downtime to switch providers.
I think it will always be easier to just move your funds and setup anew with some other provider. You can use BIP32 to maybe reuse the same seed, but actually moving channels and keys doesn't make much sense to me.
284 sats \ 1 reply \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
The goal of the LSP Spec is to create an open system and avoid lock-in. Hopefully this plays out. With that said, capital intensive markets tend to be more centralized than non-capital-intensive ones.
One factor that might offset some of this tendency to centralize is that there are diminishing returns to increasingly massive LN channels. A 10BTC LN channel isn't all that useful if the average payment size is 10k sats. Individuals need many channels in order to reach the full network, which means that smaller players can enter the LSP market and sell small to medium sized channels.
234 sats \ 0 replies \ @SachinMeier 13 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Stacker News Roundtable #2 - LSPs bitcoin
what's the difference between yield and ROI, especially in the LN context?