1 sat \ 2 replies \ @k00b 7 Dec 2022 \ parent \ on: Lightning Payments API: Instantly integrate Lightning payments into your app bitcoin
lnpay was free when it started too FYI. I'd be careful saying "there would be no fees whatsoever" if you plan to eventually charge.
We are still in the ideation stage.
Now this make sense! Lots of the things you are saying about the product are in conflict with each other; e.g. "integrate the Lightning Network into your app without managing a node" while also saying "it's non-custodial - we connect to a node you are running."
would this product be useful for you?
I don't really understand what you're building exactly and it doesn't sound like you entirely do either tbh. Currently, I run my own node for SN. I considered using lnpay when I first started but decided not to. Another service which I would explore - were I exploring (which I'm not) - would be River Lightning Service. Again, I'm not sure how your product differs exactly, and unless I did, I would use products where I can get more information about how they work.
The main questions I ask myself when choosing a service like this:
  1. what are the time and financial costs relative to me doing it on my own
  2. how much control/permission am I giving them over my product
  3. are they worthy of the control/permission
    • do I trust them to be as available, fully featured, and up to date as something I build on my own
    • will they shut me down or "regulate" the users of my product in a way I don't agree with
If I were you guys, I'd deeply explore those services and figure out why they made the design choices they did - because it sounds like you want to build a better version of those services. Without studying them, you might end up reinventing their wheel rather than improving upon it. Improving their wheel likely entails tradeoffs which you might not fully appreciate yet.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @haseabamin 8 Dec 2022
Thanks for your feedback @k00b
Let me outline how we're viewing this and hopefully you can air out any flawed assumptions we have.
  1. user X visits business Y and wishes to purchase something (it could be credits, or a single item, doesn't matter)
  2. We would generate a link to a unique checkout page for business Y.
  3. business Y redirects user X to that checkout page (similar to stripe) hosted on our website.
  4. When user X pays invoice, the sats go directly into business Y's custodial wallet (e.g. Bluewallet, WOS, etc.)
lnpay was free when it started too FYI.
From my research, LnPay started charging $99/month (which is very expensive) only a year after starting business, which isn't that long. The intention would be to not monetize this for as long as possible (5-10 years) until the lightning network has matured and has been adopted more widely. At that point, we wouldn't need to charge that much money. We would have so many users that even a small fee would be profitable. I believe this is why Strike.me currently has no cost. And zero fees would be sustained through funding.
Yes, it would be non-custodial.
If I were to clarify what @dillion was saying here, the idea would be that the user will initially have a custodial Bluewallet or WOS, and the payments would go directly to those wallets without ever touching our wallets. We wouldn't hold any private keys, we just would offload that responsibility to another custodial wallet. It would also have the option to be non-custodial if the business decides that it no longer wants to connect with a custodial solution and instead manage a lightning node, but still have invoices sent through us.
I'm not sure how your product differs exactly
The following was what we thought were what made us different than other solutions
  1. 0 fee (no monthly or percentage)
  2. No KYC
  3. No Depositing or Withdrawing developer funds, developers always will directly receive payments to their own wallets.
  4. Targeted to NEW, non enterprise, developers that want to just build lightning apps (unlike RLS)
Let us know your thoughts
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 8 Dec 2022
I'm not the right person to ask for detailed feedback from. I'd only be able to simulate the intended user. I'd reach out to many of the Bolt Fun entrants and see what the pain points of implementing their projects were. Maybe there's overlap.
It sounds interesting, like a wrapper around any lnurl compatible wallet (which is how I assume you'd pay to WOS and Bluewallet). I can see some developers being intimidated by lnurl.
I believe this is why Strike.me currently has no cost
Strike has low costs because they've raised 10's of millions of dollars in venture funding and are sacrificing profits for growth. This is a tradeoff consumer products often make.
You aren't building a consumer app - you are building a b2b app. Stripe wasn't free when it started. I recommend you think more about this.
LnPay started charging $99/month (which is very expensive) only a year after starting business
IIRC Tim didn't only start charging until recently, and launched the service nearly 3 years ago.
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