Not all bitcoiners think btc should be a MoE.
There are some small stuff, for example, I don't use the term "wallet" to describe Breez. I don't think the term makes sense in the context of Lightning. Many disagree with me on that.
An app. Or a payment app. Why people don't use wallet to describe Cash, PayPal, Venmo?
Wallets are signers. Lightning "wallets" are much more than signers.
100% agree on wallets being signers. Bitcoin does suffer from bad UX terminologies; perhaps they should have been called keychains, as a lot of people today recommend.
A custodial payments app powered by the lightning network is completely justified to get new people onboard or simply if you want things to just work. People need to realize that good custodial lightning companies are not bad. There's always a choice in bitcoin to host your own node and that's the important part - that there is a choice.
Perhaps, but I believe in a non-custodial future that preserves the value proposition of Bitcoin. That's why we're focused on non-custodial. I think on the UX side, we can be on par with what custodial and even fiat solutions offer.
lol. There are many feature that if we were to develop a custodial solution would be great: receive to a lightning address, offline receive are two popular example. But, we're not compromising on self custody, so it would take longer for us, but we'll get there 🐢
The way I see it, Lightning as a network is agnostic to stable coins. In Taro for example, only the edges need to support it. So, it's not really a Lightning feature, it's a way to use Lightning to transfer fungible tokens. It's still btc from a Lightning standpoint.
The only question Lightning wise is if it's ready to handle the stable coins traffic. Meaning, it will require a lot more liquidity to handle the traffic generated by stable coins transfers and w/o better liquidity management tools in place, I think we should wait.
It's not a wallet, it's an account ;)
I don't blame users. My view is that people don't care, they use what works best for them. The reason they choose to use custodial solutions is because non-custodial solutions can't offer a better UX.
I believe that we need build non-custodial solutions that users will prefer to use and I truly believe we'll get there. P2P money has a lot of UX benefits.
Thats fantastic. like me I am prefer the wallet only feature. POS and the podcast is not my requirements at the moment( I totally admit its a great idea and do the job well).
May i ask when can we have access to the wallet only app?
Is Breez ready to be split into multiple applications? At what point do the wins overcome the risks? Are you planning any direct communication between the LN enabled apps on the same device?
We're working on it. We're going to release another product based on Blockstream's Greenlight. Meaning, the user node will run in the cloud and the keys will be on the user device. This will allow us to spin-off Breez to multiple apps: wallet, podcast player, point if sake, and then more.
I wrote about the short term trade offs here:
https://medium.com/breez-technology/get-ready-for-a-fresh-breez-multiple-apps-one-node-optimal-ux-519c4daf2536
Blinded routing and PTLC are required to enhance privacy. Both will be supported by all implementations, just a matter of time imo. I also think BOLT12 is needed.
There are few enhancements coming up: hold htlcs, onion messages that will enable asynchronous payment (aka offline receive). I'm really looking forward to see some progress with these
Keep in mind the current Breez app is running a full Lightning node on your device. Including Neutrino and source routing.
Our new Greenlight offering gas a different model: the node is in the cloud and only the keys are on the device. It will be much lighter to use.
We're running a marathon. A lot of resources are needed to build a scalable non-custodial infrastructure and to educate the market about using Bitcoin as MoE. However, I think it will happen much sooner than people think.
Should bitcoiners stop trying to make everything trustless and guaranteed by the Bitcoin blockchain and start relying on reputation and market forces to provide goods and services instead?
There's no such thing as "bitcoiners". People can do whatever they want. For me, you're describing the value prop of Bitcoin. There's no contradiction between free market and P2P. There's also no such thing as "trustless", there's only trust-minimize.
I had used wechat for work, and Elon's right that it's incredibly powerful.
You can literally do everything on that phone, ordering take away, booking flight, looking for places to rent, twitter style message board, even paying invoices for business etc.
And the best feature really is the chat, you can chat and send money while attaching messages.
I am wondering if this is the goal for Breez, except of course, no more censorship.
Yes, WeChat-like experience is part of the plan and very feasible in non-custodial Lightning. Integration Lightning into your day to day experience is the key to it's adoption.
I think that its going to be great for mobile wallets too. I can see a single balance wallet that's primarily lightning but can do on-chain spending and receiving via splicing.
Not sure. It's true that splice out is better than a reverse submarine swap from a UX standpoint, but it changes your channel capacity. Meaning, next time you top up via Lightning, you'll have to splice-in. Not ideal.
What is the the theoretical risk of custodial Lightning wallets? Could the app creator theoretically suddenly shut down and destroy lightning balances? What assures Breez customers of your security?
Breez is non-custodial. It follows the same security mode Lightning provides. Only users can access their funds. They are the only one who can sign the transactions required to send/receive funds.
Custodial wallets are a different animal. The operators of a custodial service can access users funds and can steal them.
Is it possible to earn money by providing liquidity for LN network? Average hourly wage where I live is only 2USD so not much is needed to be sustainable.
Check out Lightning Pool, Blocktank, Liquidity Ads. However, Lightning doesn't generate a lot of yield right now and there are costs involved in running a node.
Thats fantastic. like me I am prefer the wallet only feature. POS and the podcast is not my requirements at the moment( I totally admit its a great idea and do the job well).
May i ask when can we have access to the wallet only app?
We've put it on hold because we want to built it on top of Greenlight.
The lightning functionalities are (1) use your node identity to authenticate (a la lnurl-auth) (2) integrate Lightning payments into messaging.
We hope to resume development once we have the right infrastructure in place.
@fiatjaf is working on nostr, a alternative for Twitter. At this moment this is, so far as I know, only for public messaging. But maby this setup can also be used for private massages.
Apologies, I misunderstood and thought this would be live presentation. Anyways, we have time next week to get to know one another but in the meantime, I'm curious to get your thoughts on what are the key trade-offs of LSPs (vs. Neobanks)? Would it be costs? Do you foresee LSPs being as cost-efficient if regulators start to add requirements (licenses, KYC / AML, other)?
Great question. I think neobanks will have challenges with global outreach due to regulatory requirements. KYC causes friction and AML are limiting.
Long term I also think the on-chain cost of a non-custodial solution will be lower, making it very competitive with custodial services.
We think that in order to scale Lightning, this is indeed the best path going forward. But we will offer users to self host the Greenlight environment and we will keep maintaining the "node on device" offering.
Are merchants asking for features added to the simple point-of-sale that Breez offers today? If so, what kind of features? And are there any that Breez is considering adding?
I was really enjoying breeze until the sats I initially put in ran out and found I needed to reinitialize my wallet with a large 2ksat fee (for a second time).
I tried refilling before it ran out but it failed after a dozen tries.
I rarely go on an uninstall rampage, but I tell you that did it for me. This happened to me today.
Losing 50 cents in a vending machine will never be forgotten. I won't be coming back if that's how it's supposed to work.
Also lack of a playlist and the ability to choose to auto-add to a playlist and auto-download like podcast addict is a major deficit.
Is my experience unique?
Breez charge a fee whenever there's a need to create a new channel. This is different from a custodial solution. Not sure why you failed to top up the wallet, maybe the sender failed to route? Generally, bugs can happen. We're learning and improving the product all the time.
Playlist is a feature on our roadmap.
It would be nice to prevent your wallet from being emptied out and closed out simply by listening to podcasts. Needing to spend another buck to open a new channel only to have it happen again will piss people off enough they won't want to spend their time on your platform
I didnt see an answer to my original question. I certainly hope closing people's channels isn't your primary revenue model.
We don't manually close channels unless they weren't being used for at least a month. There are cases where channels get closed because of unresponsive nodes or bugs (Lightning isn't yet 100% robust).
This is another reason why it seems your channel got closed by the network and not manually by Breez. We don't have any automation in place that close channels... Btw, closing channels is costing us funds. We would much rather keep channels open for active users.