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Tinkering with Phoenix Wallet
315 sats \ 5 comments \ @PictureRoom 12 Apr bitcoin

Downloaded Phoenix wallet and tinkered around with it for a bit. I quite like it. Very simple UX, quick, and very easy to manage.

I do run my own node with my Start9 and have a few channels open with enough inbound and outbound liquidity, but it's also nice to learn a new wallet and establish more channels elsewhere. I've heard good things about this wallet as well so I'm glad to see it in the iOS store again.

I went to open a new channel in Phoenix by opening a 500k channel by sending funds from my node via Thunderhub. I wanted to try this because I can select which channel(s) to send out from. This helps rebalance as well. There was a fee of a few thousand sats to open the initial channel, but that's fine. Cost was around 6k sats. I sent back 475,000 sats back to my main node so I could have inbound liquidity on Phoenix.

Very nice.

Couple of questions though:

  1. Am I able to connect to btcpay with this?
  2. For sending out sats to cold storage after the channel is more full, what is the best route to do this? I've read somewhere on SN that there is a good swap out feature within the app. Is Boltz not needed? What is best practice for this in regards to coin control?

Thank you. I've been learning a lot lately from SN. Slowly, but surley...

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226 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 12 Apr
  1. No. Phoenix and phoenixd (server) are using ONLY Acinq channels. You can't manage channels with other peers. Walled garden.
  2. You can send to any onchain address directly from Phoenix. You don't have to do it through any swap, Phoenix have integrated swap. You don't need Boltz to swap out sats from Phoenix.

NOTES:

  • Do not send out all the balance you have in Phoenix, always leave at least 5%, otherwise they will close your channel and you will have to pay again opening fees.
  • Always start with a big deposit, so your channel will be well sized. Otherwise, each time you send more sats to Phoenix it will so splice-in and you will pay more fees.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @PictureRoom OP 12 Apr

Thank you @DarthCoin. This may be a dumb question, but when that channel is closed, what on-chain address is used? How is that accessed within Phoenix?

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199 sats \ 2 replies \ @SHA256man 12 Apr

i don't think u can connect BTCpay to Phoenix wallet, u wud have to use phoenixd server, which is only a few lines of copy-paste code. i cannot find a specific guide at the moment.

here's an example of linking LNbits to phoenixd: #682686
here's how to attach stacker.news to phoenixd: #695912
installing phoenixd on Linux: #477485

depending on ur privacy and fee preferences, u can either

  • swap-out to on-chain directly (called splice-out) from the large channel, thereby creating an on-chain footprint. if u have originally created the channel thru an LN payment, this operation will only link the swapped-out UTXO to the future spliced-out or spliced-in UTXO's.
  • alternatively, u can use the swapping services like boltz.exchange, swaps.eldamar.icu (smaller amounts for cheaper), or Robosats (auction of swaps).
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @PictureRoom OP 12 Apr

Great, thank you.

I did create the channel on Pheonix via LN. I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by when you say "if u have originally created the channel thru an LN payment, this operation will only link the swapped-out UTXO to the future spliced-out or spliced-in UTXO's."

I've been using Boltz to do swaps back to onchain to cold storage after obtaining more bitcoin on RoboSats (or elsewhere).

So the thread would be:
From Robosats (or payment from a sale to my node) -> Boltz -> cold storage

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SHA256man 12 Apr

if you buy the channel and deploy liquidity via LN, u don't use ur own UTXO's, so the UTXO's produced from future on-chain operations are not linked to u. however, the behavior of those future UTXO's is still linked to splicing in & out of a specific Phoenix channel. sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't.

i found Phoenix very useful for large swaps thru Boltz and the success rate is very high. the downside is the high swapping fee and high LN fees through ACINQ, so i am starting to think how to minimize those fees.

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