Received this @Alby newsletter today, I'd have post just a link if it was accessible online, but isn't! Lot of useful links (should be clean from trackers), and poll replicated at the end,enjoy!
Happy New Year!
2024 was for us a year of pivot, releases, upgrades, learning. We are glad to take this journey with you.... and the rest of the Lightning Network. We were closer to our users than ever - through our products, support e-mails, community calls, Buzz newsletter.
Do we have any resolutions? One is already completed - onboarding our users to self-custody. Next one - get them to use it! And... are you making your part?
We're commited to make Lightning Network strong and accessible. Last year was a great leap forwards in this regard - even if the results are not immediately visible. Thank you for staying with us, logging to Nostr with Alby Extension, tipping with our wallet, giving feedback to the Hub, experimenting with Nostr Wallet Connect. Your usage, feedback, comments drive us and give direction of action. And 2025 will be a year of action, taking control of software we're using, making backups, excercising our sovereignty and Bitcoin's knowledge. Let this - and healthy lifestyle will be our resolutions.
To the next great year together!
For the good start, take a look at our research of the most important news of last month, project discoveries, dozen of new usecases for Bitcoin on the web, and the most important updates from Alby.
Bzzzz!
🐝 What can't be missed from last month?
BITCOIN WORLD NEWS
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🚀 Bitcoin is entering 2025 as the 7th largest asset in the world
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🛡️ Geyser Guardians are now live. The aim of the program is to power the Geyser platform and grants going towards creators who are pushing grassroots Bitcoin adoption
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💳 Strike announces Bill Pay - a payment/accounting feature, making life only on #bitcoin almost effortless for its users
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🎮 THNDR has released another, after Clinch, multiplayer variation on a classic arcade game, with lightning bitcoin on stakes. Welcome Blocks - redefining the future of competitive gaming.
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👨💻 Austin’s Pleblab announces the 3rd season of Top Builder - accelerate program with rewards for bitcoin devs and startups, that innovate within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
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🔐 Blockstream has released Jade Plus: the upgraded version of their open-source, high quality hardware wallet.
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🌍 The 9th wave of Open Sats grants have been announced.. These projects were chosen to receive financial support in their goal to improve financial tools, localization, user experience, content personalization, and accessibility within the nostr network.
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🔄 Nostr Development Kit for Flutter/Dart has released v0.2, with Nostr Wallet Connect support
APPZ UPDATES
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🤖 Amboss has unveiled Magma AI, a machine-learning tool that refines how nodes on the Bitcoin Lightning Network connect and allocate capital.
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🖥️ Damus released Notedeck Alpha to its Purple Subscribers. It is a multiplatform native Nostr client with multiple feed columns, available on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
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🎵 Wavlake - musicasting 2.0 app, redefining music scene with value 4 value models enabled by bitcoin - has released their mobile app for iOS and Android.
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🍊 Orange Pill App have introduced login with Nostr to their platform.
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🎂 NoStrudel - multifeature, yet minimalistic Nostr client, has updated to 0.42, with extensive code cleanup, improved support for images and gifs, and various minifeatures.
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🕹️ Saving Satoshi, bitcoin educational interactive game, based on programming, has already 10 chapters.
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🟧 Satoshi Version 1.0 - the mobile app to buy, pay, earn, learn, spend and borrow sats - onchain, over LN and Liquid (!) is now live for users from the waitlist.
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☁️ Rizful - lightning node in the cloud, Bitcoin & Nostr toolkit on early stage - is giving 11,000 sats for testing their service
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💵 Zaprite integrates Orqestra, enabling automatic conversion of USD payments into BTC.
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📈 LNMarkets have launched LNM Futures - derivative perpetual BTC/USD futures contracts operating over Lightning Network.
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🖋️ Coracle 0.5.0 has arrived with reworked login experience, performance improvements, undo option via delayed send, rich-text-editor and ability to send NIP-04.
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Boltz incentivises liquidity provision for their swaps service.
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🔮 Predyx - lightning native prediction market - has launched multi-option markets.
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📸 Olas - Instagram clone over Nostr - has introduced NWC zaps and swipe-to-zap feature.
Alby Hub available on Raspiblitz
Alby Hub, our hottest release of 2024, is open-source lightning node... you know all of that already. It can be installed on so many device types - from desktops to single board minicomputers. More and more operating systems and platforms are adding Alby Hub as app on their marketplace - now you can use it also as the interface to your Raspiblitz node.
Now Alby Cloud is charged with sats... but priced in dollars
We listened to you: Alby Cloud is now priced in dollars!
With a rising cost of BTC, we don't want your noderunnning costs to overwhelm you. And we are still - like most of the lightning network - reshaping our monetization model. Is it a good change? Our blogposts explores reasoning and team's approach.New subscribers can now enjoy $6.45 / month, and even cheaper with new annual plan.
**🚀DISCOVER NEW APPZ 🚀 **
Alby Discover is the richest and most useful list of Bitcoin / Lightning / Nostr appz.
Every month we are monitoring the space for new candidate projects.
What have surfaced last month? What should be added to the Discover page? 👇
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🆕 Kanbanstr - Kanban board of Nostr notes
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🆕 Brrrrr - Slick web cashu mint tool
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🆕 Zap Gram - Telegram bot with a wallet
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🆕 Tides - Nostr messenger extension, with zaps, very early release
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🆕 PULL THAT UP JAMIE! - AI powered search engine paid with sats
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🆕 Pulse - New media outlet from Austin hackerspace
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🆕 Jumble.social - New client focused on relay browsing
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🆕 Masize - Lightning Address on your own domain
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🆕 WorkIt Fitness - pays sats for doing exercises
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🆕 VoltzTip Bot - Telegram with a small custodial wallet, lightning address etc
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🆕 VPNstr - another VPN paid with sats!
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🆕 SnapNostr - social media pretty images for nostr notes to be shared
Bitcoin 2024 wrapped by Lopp
Jameson Lopp, bitcoin developer, entrepreneur and educator, has published his annualy exploration of Bitcoin's on-chain and off-chain metrics from 2024, offering a holistic view of its development and adoption. His article is a set of tweets with charts and numbers, documenting Bitcoin's progress in 2024, encompassing technical advancements, economic factors, and user engagement.
The best lightning setup for content creators?
Our founder Bumi and Stephan Livera discussed Alby's journey from browser extension to the self-custodial Lightning system. This podcast covers Nostr integration for digital identity, Alby's UX and the architecture, it also highlights Bitcoin integration challenges, the innovative NWC protocol for easier developer integration, and introduces Alby Go, a mobile payment app, while exploring the future of self-custodial solutions.
📺 Check more on our "ALBY IN PODCASTS" playlist
Did you get your 🌟 Alby Benefits 🌟?
Being Alby subscriber already comes with multiple perks - and we will only continue to reveal additional features. Paid plan, cloud hosting of Alby Hub comes not only with reliable maintenance, updates, backups, but also priority support, personal onboarding sessions, access to special discussion boards and recently: Alby Benefits. This special program involves partnerships with multiple Bitcoin brands and for our premium users provides premium deals - for a hardware, newsletter or a conference.
Reap the Benefits of being with Alby
Not on Alby yet? het in frwith this invite 🤫!
We're rolling out one of the most important features
12 words can save your onchain Bitcoin wallet, but what about lightning nodes, where there is lots of additional, and constantly changing info? We're glad to introduce new Alby Hub's solution: dynamic channel backups. Unlike static backups, Alby Hub's system uses a Versioned Storage Service (VSS) for automatic, continuous updates, ensuring seamless recovery and eliminating peer dependency.
Alby Go is constantly being updated
Our second hottest release of 2024 - slickest Lightnign mobile wallet "Alby Go" since being born has gone through few nice improvements! It's already on v1.8.1 with multiple improvements - technical and for users comfort. The app is (naturally) open-source and self-custodial.
🎓 EDUCORNER 🎓
🦉 Pocket guide to BIPs, explained with graphics
🦉 What is a channel reserve? Lightning explained by Bitcoin Design
🦉 Permissionless Career Guide by BitVocation. Find your career in Bitcoin!
🦉 Nice interactive Bitcoin tech tutorial made by Satsy
🦉 Short introguide to Bitcoin
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📆 Upcoming Events 📆
- Bitcoin Medellin, Colombia, January 17-18
- Bitcoin Day Naples, Florida, January 18
- Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town, January 24-25
- SATS'N'FACTS, February 8-10
- bitcoin++ catches some waves, Brazil, February 19-22
Get cheaper tickets for conferences by becoming Alby Cloud subscriber!
And as always - we're meeting regularly at Alby's Community Call! Join next ones on January 9 and 23, at 3:00 PM UTC. This is a cozy online group call with demos, updates and new ideas for building on bitcoin. Mark your calendar.
If we missed anything - let us know! 🧡 We love your feedback. Big or small, feature requests or bug reports, we read them all!
You can help us out with it by:
- leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review of our Browser Extension at Chrome or Firefox.
- leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review of Alby Go on Android or iOS 💬 joining Alby's Discord, where our team and users hang out and chat.
Thanks for reading,
See you on the network!
Your Alby team
POLL
❓ What should we work on in 2025
1️⃣ BOLT1220.0%
2️⃣ Mobile extension app0.0%
3️⃣ Taproot Assets0.0%
2️⃣ Plugin marketplace to Hub20.0%
4️⃣ make things stable and easy60.0%
5 votes \ poll ended