pull down to refresh

Flash Wallet trial run
1297 sats \ 14 comments \ @Scoresby 30 Jul lightning
I have never used Paywithflash, but I saw that they released a new wallet and I was curious, so I installed it on my phone.
I was particularly interested in this by Pierre Corbin:
It’s the first mobile self custodial wallet that can trigger payments while in your pocket.
After installing the wallet, I decided to see if it could receive a small payment right off the bat. I'm interested in this because I'd love to be able to tell someone to download a wallet and then zap them 100 sats and have that experience be easy.
At first I created an invoice for 10 sats. When I copied the invoice to pay it with another wallet, I noticed that it was a Liquid invoice, not Lightning. Not sure if this was supposed to happen or not, but I assumed my amount was too small.
Next I created an invoice for 1000 sats. This worked and I was able to copy an ln-invoice and pay it with another wallet. The payment wasn't as fast as some of my other lightning wallets I've used. It showed up in Flash Wallet in about 5 seconds, but was listed as pending. I'm not sure how long it stayed as pending because it didn't update on its own. It only switched to paid after I tapped away from the invoice screen.
When it did arrive, I noticed that the amount was only 950 sats. It seems that the Breez SDK led to a 5% fee. I was curious about this (because it seemed high), so I went to Breeze Tech's documentation and found this page about end-user fees.
It seems that they way they are able to do this without lightning channels is that they use Breez's nodeless implementation that relies on Boltz swaps and Liquid. As far as I can tell this means Flash Wallet is good if you are a merchant who wants to receive payments over a several thousand sats, but may not be the best wallet if you are looking to do zapping on nostr or SN.
It doesn't look like they've posted their documentation for the wallet yet. When I click on getting started -> connect your wallet -> flash wallet I get a blank page.
It's cool to see new wallets starting up. It certainly looks nice. Hopefully they will get a little more documentation up soon, because I had to do a bit more sleuthing than I would have preferred to figure out what was going on. Ideally, I'd be able to learn a little about the fees directly in the wallet.
write
preview
related posts
7 replies \ @justin_shocknet 23h
It's just another fake L2 swap, it's slow and expensive because literally every time you use it you're buying or selling a shitcoin through a centralized exchange (Boltz or SideSwap)
No different than the dozens before it.
Even one of the more infamous perpetrators of the mobile node hoax is getting miffled:
reply
17 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby OP 22h
Also, it is not stated anywhere that I could read that the balance is held on liquid. This is something Corbin ended up acknowledging after Corallo pushed on him:
But the wallet balance is kept in L-BTC on the Liquid Network.
I'm no Lightning genius, and perhaps am a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but it didn't even occur to me that funds have to stay on liquid at rest because the wallet doesn't have any channels. I should have been able to deduce this, but rather stupidly, I didn't.
Corbin also says: "The Liquid Federation is transparent about the trade-offs as they state on their website"
Yet, I don't think Flash was very transparent about what was going on.
reply
122 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 22h
I've obviously seem some be pedantic and claim that you can "self-custodially hold L-BTC", which is semantically true though somewhat of a misleading distinction
I believe this is the same distinction I was making with ecash. I don't mind it so much, but I think it's on the wallet to make it clear it's not a bitcoin wallet. Ecash wallets are self-custodial ecash, not bitcoin. If Flash says hey, here's a cool liquid wallet, i don't think I would have been confused. However, I also wouldn't have downloaded it and tried it out because liquid seems like a poor set of trade-offs to me.
I'll admit though that this conversation is making me come around to your viewpoint. Certainly, if a liquid (or ecash) wallet claims to seamlessly interact with bitcoin, it needs to make it really clear that the balance is not being held in bitcoin.
reply
510 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 22h
Yep. My beef is those word games are just the first trust violation, it's spin.
It's exactly the same as saying Coinbase Pro is self-custodial because you self-custody your own API key. ECash is just an authentication method to a server, no different than an API key, just adds extra steps to support virtue signaling and larp.
making me come around to your viewpoint
All do in time.
reply
102 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 22h
Yep. All these scam wallets run the exact same playbook, brand some exchange SDK boilerplate as self-custodial, make a few hundred bps each time someone tries it.
There's so many because it takes maybe two weeks and $3000 in indian subcontractors to make one, the hardest part is the app store submission. Pretty asymmetric if you can sucker a few thousand people into "trying" it.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 22h bot
https://xcancel.com/CierrePorbin/status/1950556927978582269
reply
17 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 23h
yes, I think you've put it more clearly than I did. I was a little disappointed in the experience. For all the custody, I thought I'd get a zip zappy fast and cheap lightning flow. Did not happen.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 23h bot
https://xcancel.com/shocknet_justin/status/1950583425825734779
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 5h
Another scam disguising LN payments into submarine swaps with crap like Liquid.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TRUTHSEEKER20 11h
Thanks for sharing yur experience. well, I was curious about Flash Wallet too, and your experience gives a good early picture. The 5% fee via Breez SDK definitely seems steep for small zaps, especially if you're using it for casual tipping on Nostr or SN. Interesting tradeoff with the nodeless setup + Liquid integration though. I agree — having fee info and a bit more transparency inside the wallet would go a long way. Looks promising overall, just needs some polish.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheMorningStar 13h freebie
Which Self custodial wallet is the cheapest and user friendly? Phoenix is ok?
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 18h
Sounds similar to Aqua.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitcoingecko 7h
Seems like it to me!
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 30 Jul bot
https://xcancel.com/CierrePorbin/status/1950273396585222412
reply