@TonyGiorgio said the quiet part out loud - "For one, I've fallen out of love for Bitcoin and the industry."
its something i've been hearing from more and more people and feeling myself a lot. our industry has lost itself a bit and people are slowly but surely leaving it
I can imagine for somebody working on Bitcoin adoption, it can be heartbreaking to be part of a community that loves to talk about, but resists adopting, Bitcoin itself.
i think to a lot of us its a mix of things. disillusionment with (parts) of the community and large parts of the industry.
we got lost in the narratives, the ngu, the etfs and saving africa etc. At the same time we haven't really found much adoption outside of pumping our bags. medium of exchange has kinda lost its importance in the discussions because everyone just screams bitcoin fixes this and everything divided by 21 million.
herd mentality has become the norm while critical first principles thinking and cypherpunk ideals disappeared. far from unpredictable but still sad.
Thanks for sharing.
Bitcoin is not an industry.
This is not the first time we see people leaving and losing faith in bitcoin and won't be the last. But somehow bitcoin refuses to die.
But all the bitcoin wallets are an industry. Self custody solutions such as Casa and Unchained. Mining pools and equipment. Open dime and titanium plates. Umbrel and start 9 nodes. Faraday bags. etc
I've talked a lot about Mobile Nodes and ECash being terrible ideas- and regret that it was perceived as friendly fire and taken personally... All respect due nevertheless for the effort as builders with the prescience to pivot
More bullish than ever on Bitcoin means of exchange
Go fuck yourself. You don't get to sit there talking shit constantly for years and then all of a sudden say "no offense, much respect" when a "competing" (I use that term very lightly) wallet of yours goes down.
It only became pointed after you became unhinged over nothing like you're doing now... it's not a beef with any other mobile wallet, I even work with them on things...
Think what you want, I mean it when I applaud the effort
Sad, but I respect them taking a months-long wind-down process (and also diving into their entire thought process) - gives people time to really figure out their next steps, instead of scrambling and hoping for the best.
Maybe someone can help me with this issue, I was having issues moving my funds from a Fedimint to a LN channel. It kept failing when i tried to convert to lightning. Anyone know if we can get our funds out of the mint we were in?
Now when I load the app, i cant even connect to my Fedimint and see my balance, I just get "Error: Failed to connect to a federation."
Support page gives me a deep link to Element/Matrix, but the link is invalid (I have Element downloaded and set up on Android).
I don't remember the exact message when trying to convert from mint to lightning but it was something generic, and I retried for a couple of weeks and then gave up. Now when I load the app, I get the "Error: Failed to connect to a federation." So I can't try again.
I did export my wallet state, I also have my recovery phrase.
What would be the most straightforward way to recover the funds to a new wallet? First restore my mutiny wallet then withdraw to onchain address?
Yes, correct. The latest version has a patch that let's you transfer your funds to an on-chain address. I had a similar issue recently, with 500k stuck in a federation, and this worked for me.
I stopped using it recently because it had become too unreliable. I suspect the fedimint integration added too much complexity, more than they had anticipated and were able to shoulder. Anyway, all the best to them...
VC's expect startups to pivot based on new information, our differences aside this is a team of proven builders and I would expect their investors to be fully supportive of whatever they pivot toward
If those investors aren't supportive they better be done investing in Bitcoin startups because they're unlikely to get into any good deals ever again
nah... gov have nothing to do with this shut down.
fedi ecash shit and the model of wallet app that will not gonna work well.
But is good that they did it in the early phase... lowering the damages.
You know that in addition to fedimint support, it has onchain and lightning support? I was just experimenting with their lsp functionality when i was this news.
I really enjoyed the simplicity of their wallet. Simplicity is so hard to do well. I'm excited for whatever they do next and I'm super curious what ben is up to.
WTH! I've just started using Mutiny in the last month and simply trying to figure out how to join a fed. Now this shit happening!
Though, I really feel sorry for the team!
Companies will rise and fall, Bitcoin will still be up and running. The sweetest part is that bitcoin is self-sovereign, self-custody and self-responsibility. Bitcoin companies are nothing but third-party, in a sense. There comes a time when you get tired of doing "janitorial work" for others.
to me personally mutiny never had product market fit. bitcoin is the digital 'commodity money'. but the apps and services around it make no mistake are industries and companies and that's ok.
imo mutiny or other apps like it... that try to be all things to everyone end up unfocused and sometimes doing nothing well. In my opinion the UI for mutiny... wasn't great either. It just felt very basic and not clear in what it wanted to provide well.
in my opinion what this really boils down to is phoenix 'voluntarily' leaving the united states. phoenix was the 'lightning wallet of the future' and was by far the most practical, best realized mass-onboarding lightning wallet to date that could be used by many many people. A lot of the 'pain' surrounding lightning currently... is a result of this (phoenix leaving the us market). Yes phoenix is still available... but the US is by far the world's biggest market and lightning needs the US market (apps, education, and LSPs) to really thrive.
I also believe that LSPs providing inbound liquidity increasing a 'channel size'... is really a key advancement for lightning. yes you can increase liquidity yourself on your 'own node' through an atomic swap... but a lot of people wont want to do this.
my tin foil hat says (remember, tinfoil) is that this really goes much deeper. lightning is a day to day application of bitcoin through layers and LSPs, through apps like phoenix... really realize the 0 to 1 for daily bitcoin spending. I'll let you use your imagination as to where that might lead us, long term in terms of bitcoin's relationship with the US dollar... and who might or might not have an interest in that.
Whether it'll be appreciated here or not (doubt it), I gave my thoughts on Mutiny and Lightning overall while admonishing the active criminalization of privacy.
Also gave kudos to @supertestnet for his efforts to improve upon Monero and its privacy promises and advantages via his eXaMinR tool (#634963).
That was a very thoughtful response you wrote on Nostr. I agree that lightning is not nearly as elegant as Bitcoin and I hope a better solution is discovered one day.
To answer both you and @dollarparity, I want Bitcoin to get better irrespective of my opinions on my altcoin of choice and privacy coins; Lightning has clearly shown itself as only benefiting custodians who can afford to eat the cost of unintended force closures and endless channel liquidity, while individuals unless extraordinarily lucky usually get shafted.
Despite the concerns of others in regards to centralization and the potential for rugpulls, I'd much rather refer to Cashu wallets that does what Lightning does better to prospective self-custody newbies than any pure Lightning wallet simply due to there being less to think about.
In spite of that, I've also advocated for Lightning functionality (as much as can reasonably be implemented) to be a native part of Bitcoin Cash's base layer since it's already suitably made for it. To deny what Lightning does right would be to be technically and cognitively dissonant, but it sucks a lot more than it doesn't on a user level unfortunately if you'd rather utilize it self-custodially.
It's not surprising to see this sort of pivot with on chain fees being so low at the moment. I tried Mutiny, unfortunately, payments wouldn't go through at all, and if they did, it would be >30 seconds.
Fedimint v0.4.0: Changing Peer DNS Names, Wallet Client Module Rewrite
Fedimint is a modular system for building federated applications, offering a trust-minimized, censorship-resistant, and private alternative to centralized apps. It comes with three default modules: Bitcoin, Lightning, and Chaumian Ecash.
Yeah. That's a really cynical read. These guys busted their asses and put their heart and soul into the project. They also showed up here and shared their successes and failures, opening themselves up to catching the kind of shit you can only catch in a forum. I have a lot of respect for them all.
Sad to see them shut it down. The interface and fedi experiment were both great. I never really used this though because I adopted it when it was a web app and I think that led me not to fully trust it. That and the upfront fee onboarding was a little wonky. I'm also just not heavy of a lightning user outside of zapping nostr peeps. I thought about hosting my own server though, so if I ever want to start my own Fedimint, I might still check that out.
Was super excited for the wallet. Then I lost sats trying to pay one LN invoice from two different sources. The team was helpful and I think I got my sats back. After that I never used the wallet again but still showed support. The team had passion and developed with a purpose. Wish them well. I will still wear my mutiny t shirt
He’s a strong personality. I respect the passion. Just like Darthcoin who I have had battles with but I still respect.
I met @justin_shocknet at the conference seems like a very nice guy. I was shocked to see Tony lash out at him like that but I think it’s passion but I’m not excusing it.
@justin_shocknet made a nice gesture, tried to bury the hatchet, but Tony told him to fuck off
Strong personality is code for stubborn.
Passion is code for emotional and unhinged.
Tony lashed out at Justin because he lacks civlity and etiquette.
And he is obviously bitter and insecure and paranoid
added: You should read the post which is better Liquid or Fedi?
Obviously Tony said Fedi and bashed Liquid and other comments such as you are a Blockstream simp or Adam Back simp
It depends on metrics mutiny had usage. Liquid is like a ghost town but I never lost a single sat on the liquid network plus I’m a liquid bull so I think liquid was always the better application
Yikes, this thread is toxic. Clearly there are some strong feelings about Mutiny in both directions.
I admire the work Tony and Ben have done to get Mutiny working the way it does. Mutiny is particularly impressive to me as it's one of the few wallets available today which manages L1, L2 (lightning), and L3 (fedimint) transactions in one unified package which at least tries very hard to be non-custodial. That's no small feat. That said, I don't use Mutiny myself, as I'm not a huge fan of PWA wallets, for security reasons, but clearly for many people the convenience was worth the risk.
I hope someone carries on developing Mutiny's open source code. The bitcoin wallet ecosystem needs greater diversity to support the great diversity of people on earth and their needs. Every honest bitcoin wallet which shuts down is a net loss to everyone invested in that ecosystem. I'm loathe to see stackers like @DarthCoin in this thread espousing "i told you so," calling the devs grifters, childishly behaving as if this event were a positive thing. But haters gonna hate, and we devs have to shut it out and focus on what matters.
@TonyGiorgio has always seemed like a reasonable person to me and I don't blame him for disembarking this peculiar train he was conducting. I wish you all the best of fortunes in your future endeavors, sir.
providing services to about 500 - 1000 daily active lightning wallets.
A wallet app service "self custodial" as promoted should never KNOW how many users they have... otherwise is obvious that they know more than just the number of users... just saying.
The correct answer should be: we never know how many users we have..."
Mutiny is totally different.
Valet is just a garbage stabelshit promoting.
Please stop with this useless shill. It will not work with a wallet that will not have any future.
I won't.
Valet is a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet with Lightning support, working on the original library IMMORTAN written by A. Kumaihorodsky, a prolific Ukrainian developer.
Use Valet because it is simply better than anything else.
Open channels with your own node, Blockctank node, Blixt node, or any other LSP.
You want to be my friend, not my enemy. I despise my enemies because they not worth my attention.
Having Darth on your side is like having a boost. I do not kiss ass, but speaking the truth.
If your app is on "Darth's standards" then you win. If not, you will be forgotten. I will never "support" an app that is not on my maxi toxic standards.
Valet is not a bad BTC app, I use it, but the fact that contain that crap stablesats it makes it under "Darth's standards".
Remove the stablesats crap if you want my attention. The whole Immortan and Anton "vision" could make it a good BTC-LN app.
He was around for a while, yes. SimpleBitcoinWallet developer had no respect for him because of boomer takes, and he moved into greener pastures known as Blixt. Probably, he is just an iPhone user despite all his toxicity.
SBW was a great wallet. Sad that is gone.
Valet, I know is trying to go forward the same idea, but that shit with stablesats makes it shit that nobody will want to eat it.
This is the truth.
We've done a lot of reflecting, and we know what we currently have is not living up to the promise. We know it won't be capable of doing that at scale, and we know we're unable to continue supporting it as is. It's time to fix what's broken, and the first step is to identify what's actually broken.
For one, I've fallen out of love for Bitcoin and the industry. I'm burnt out and unable to continue on as CEO.
Mutiny Wallet will be winding down in the coming months, with a cut-off date at the end of the year. If you want to continue using the wallet, you will have to self-host it. We will stop hosting the web app, remove the apps from Apple and Google, and shut down any other service that helps power the wallet.
Maintenance and support from us will wind down as well, and it'll be up to the community of self-hosters to keep it alive if they want it. More info regarding the shutdown and the timeline will come soon.
<end>
A few observations:
Did Mutiny Wallet have a support channel on Telegram? I don't think they did. The only way to contact them was via SN and Twitter and Nostr.
When Phoenix decided to shut down in May, a lot of users moved to Mutiny such as myself. More users is a great thing for a startup venture.
I was also interested in learning about federations, mints, fedi and e-cash.
Then in July, DNS problem with a large federation (I think it was "freedom one"). Users could not access or send their funds via lightning. I received the memo late. I could not move my funds out of "freedom one" for a few days but after 10 days or so I received a message from Fedi telegram group: try again, DNS problem has been fixed, etc... Problem solved, mini crisis averted.
Today another user cannot access his funds via web browser or Progessive Web App.
RIP mutiny!!