167 sats \ 2 replies \ @nerd2ninja 7 Jan 2023 \ on: Request: ELI5 on LNURL Auth bitcoin
Well there is a difference between the accounts you have in Zebedee SN or Wallet of Satoshi and the Lightning Service Providers (LSP) you have in something like Phoenix or Breez. I know Phoenix best so I'll talk from that perspective.
Phoenix can't actually take your sats whereas an account can. If Phoenix goes out of business, you force close your channels and backup from the seed phrase to take your funds on-chain. However, unlike running your own lightning network node, you don't get to set your minimum wait time for force closing, you trust Phoenix to take any on-chain funds to create an LN channel for you, and you can't connect to anyone else.
There's an issue with mobile devices where because they run on battery they've been make to force close apps if they try to run in the background and a self managed LN node is meant to be always on so people can route sats through you and for the benefit of your channel partner, and so that you can send a justice transaction if your channel partner tries to cheat you out of sats.
There's an issue with mobile devices where because they run on battery they've been make to force close apps if they try to run in the background and a self managed LN node is meant to be always on so people can route sats through you and for the benefit of your channel partner, and so that you can send a justice transaction if your channel partner tries to cheat you out of sats.
This isn't the case for Phoenix, right? I just need to be online to receive. I don't need to stay online to not get my channels force-closed since my mobile device is not routing payments.
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So, Phoenix actually replaces your channel state with the channel state that's on their servers every time you start the app. But they do still encourage you to open the app from time to time. They even give you a notification if don't open it for too long.
And yes, because you aren't routing, you're only receiving and sending, you're good with not having it on with 24/7 uptime, but having your channel state replaced does mean you're just straight up trusting Phoenix not to close the channel with an old channel state.
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