Just saw the recent Strike announcement on stream tipping. I wish there was a non-custodial service that let me do the same thing but in a non-custodial manner.
If I had time I would build it myself but I'm otherwise occupied 😢
There's currently a lot of friction when someone wants to set up a non-custodial service to take payments via LN and I think there's a big hole in the market here. As a web developer I just want to get an API key and build my shit!
Here's how I'm imagining it working:
- Publicise node info
- Let developers open channels to you
- Developer pays invoice for some % of the channel balance to get inbound liquidity, gets the rest back on-chain (use submarine swaps?).
- Developer gets API key
- API Service uses lnurl/bolt11 to get invoices from the developer's node
- Developer can start using service seamlessly
Downsides for the API service here is obviously that it needs to lock up a lot of funds. You can probably re-coup this cost by either having the channels pay a monthly fee or a higher routing fee to the developer's node. The initial fee can also be included in the first swap when the developer pushes liquidity to the other side.
Please, someone build this so I don't have to muck around with BTCPayserver 🙏
I’ve been working on LNPay.co to achieve something like the experience you are describing.
You can “bring your own node” hook it up via grpc/rest with readonly macaroon, get an API key and have all the lnurl/invoicing abstractions ready to roll.
Check it out docs.lnpay.co
This looks great! But it seems to have the same flaw as the Tallycoin solution suggested below - I'll have to expose my node to the clearnet.
Would you prefer being able to connect via Tor? Sounds like LNPay.co could just proxy requests via Tor to hit your node.
There are ways to obfuscate your clearnet connection, without exposing your node directly, e.g. hiding it behind a VPN.
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Tallycoin allows you to do fundraising and have lightning payments go straight to your own node.
Would they be able to turn that into a non-custodial Strike style API?
Running Tallycoin Connect on an Umbrel device is exactly what you want.
It's not, unfortunately! I don't want to expose my node to the clearnet (which is a must if I want to interact with the web in anyway).
Umbrel runs all apps through TOR by default, if that is what you are concerned about
I know that it does, that's not the issue. The issue is that the API needs to be reachable from clearnet which ends up exposing my node. Not ideal.
I don't know that much about the risk involved there. Can you explain what happens when your node gets exposed? Then people can track all activity to and from the node? I thought Lightning was more privacy preserving than that.
The information that is leaked by exposing Tallycoin to clearnet is your rough location in the world as well as making it easier for attackers to target your node.
It's not an impossible problem to get around. You can proxy the requests via a back-end service for example. But it'd be nice to not have to worry about it :)
The traffic is routing through TOR, so that should remove the first problem around physical location.
What is the risk there? Your node gets DDOS'd basically? Is there a real risk beyond that?
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It would, kind of, but not really. I'd need to expose my IP which I don't want to.
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Tallycoin has an api: https://docs.tallyco.in/api/
Also check out https://runcitadel.space/
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