SN currently has a custodial Lightning wallet because
- it was the easiest to make work well fast
- given we began dealing in very small micropayments, the trust placed in SN's custodianship was hypothetically small relative to the UX advantage
- people new to lightning, and people who are curious but not yet serious about bitcoin, would need custodial solutions before getting them to bother with self-custody
These assumptions have proven generally accurate. However (2) breaks on large micropayments, and I know that for some, the custody of 1 sat is unacceptable. Also (3) is ideally not a Lightning user's terminal state.
I want a Lightning application wallet that serves all Lightning application personas well. I also suspect SN's payment/spending volume is limited by our current custodial requirement.
There are 3 Lightning application personas as I see them:
- non-custodial maxi
- does not want a single sat in someone else's custody under any circumstance
- non-custodial pragmatist
- realizes non-custodial is the ideal, but is ux sensitive/empathetic and is okay with keeping small amounts in custodial accounts
- lazy or newb
- doesn't get it or doesn't care about custodial vs non-custodial and just wants to send/receive/store money with as little effort as possible
(1) and (3) have relatively clear requirements for a wallet's design, but I suspect those personas want things I haven't considered. (2) likely has the most variation in requirements.
Which persona are you? Also, assuming you understand the tradeoffs involved, how would your ideal lightning app wallet work?
1k sats (or more) will go to each thoughtful answer, ie there can be many bounty winners.
1,000 sats paid 16 times
Please consider doing this: SN lndhub accounts and you do not have to deal anymore with wallet app and all that shit. You just pass the responsibility to the user over his own sats.