110 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 4 Jul 2022 \ parent \ on: Machankura - LN custodial wallet accessible via any phone in six African countries bitcoin
This discussion provided some additional information.
  • Operated by a South African, who spent under one month from ideation to launch.
  • The LN Nodes (Core Lightning) run on Raspberry Pi
  • Due to load shedding by the power utility, but on a schedule, an nginx reverse proxy is used to ensure traffic goes to a node that is expected to have power
  • The Machankura service charges a 1% fee on transfers (out ?) to cover USSD fees they pay, hopes to reduce that in the future.
  • USSD sessions have a 20 second timeout, so commands must be sent promptly. [I'm curious ... how could I type a Lightning Address on a feature phone in 20 seconds?]
  • Wanted to have support for an additional country (Zimbabwe) but the USSD service provider used, Africa's Talking, does not have USSD support in Zimbabwe.
  • Work had already been underway by a separate group on an open source SMS based LN-enabled (?) bitcoin wallet (bittext). Machankura is supportive of that as well, since it will provide coverage where USSD may not be either available or allowed.
  • As a custodial wallet, there may be VASP (virtual asset service provider) regulations in certain countries (e.g., Namibia).
  • Researching innovations (e.g., Blockstreams's GreenLight) to make non-custodial work as well.
  • There was discussion about running LN nodes -- I wasn't paying close attention. Not sure if they were asking about opening a channel to provide liquidity, or what.
  • Support for forgotten PIN does not yet exist, will cause user to lose any balance. Not sure yet if that will be added.
  • When a user loses SIM, they can get a replacement (provisioned with same mobile number) and as long as they know the PIN they don't lose anything.
  • If lost SIM and cannot replace (e.g., for reasons), user loses any balance.
  • No insurance on BTC balance. [Something to the effect of best effort to protect funds or something to that effect, I'm not sure what was said.]
  • Only similar is in Venezuela.
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