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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @l0k18 22 Jan 2023 \ on: We've changed our mind about Custodial Wallets bitcoin
There is actually a couple of ways to initiate a spend on the sender side, the older keysend and AMP atomic multi-path payments (which obviously fan out when needed if channels aren't wide enough).
I don't know why exactly these methods are not supported by most (any?) wallets. They just require 33 bytes receiver key, and an amount of mSAT. A vendor is going to issue an invoice for payment in some form or another anyway. Most uses of these sender initiated payments relate to privacy reasons or recurring microservices and probably belong more in applications that access subscription based content and services. VPN, tipping platforms, etc.
It isn't really negotiable to do without internet connectivity though. And when it is patchy, so long as you have wifi at the point of sale the user just has to connect to it and off you go.
Also, Wallet of Satoshi is by far the 100% Mom lightning wallet. Since it is easy also to move funds through it on chain, one can keep just "lunch money" on it, and NBD if it's lost or stolen. Anyway, one should definitely keep larger amounts on chain and preferably in cold storage, at home.
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17 sats \ 1 reply \ @BOLT11Village OP 22 Jan 2023
Great input!!
They've all got internet connectivity, that's one of our minimum requirements. But it's not WiFi, it's all via the mobile network.
The part we're not sure about is how the MNOs handle the network traffic. Basically, people buy "bundles" (ripped off by the MNOs) and they don't provide them with unlimited data. These bundles exclude different types of traffic, for example, there could be a bundle that includes WhatsApp, but not YT (streaming).
Since lightning could "easily" replace MoMo, it actually competes with them directly and we're pretty sure they will find a way to block it if it becomes successful. But it could be that the packets on the network level are indistinguishable from other packets (haven't gone that deep yet), which would make lighting censorship resistant.
Just to explain the flow of transactions, a lot of these villagers are helped by relatives who work in the city or even abroad. So the monthly top-up is usually provided remotely with no PoS involved. The problem here (when comparing fiat to lightning) is this is normally where they take those funds and go and buy something. With sats they would be stuck unless the shop accepts it. So, if they accept sats, then the flow continues and people can actually send sats to each other (that are not sourced from wealthier people outside the village) because they know that anyone else will be able to spend them in the shop.
However, everyone including the shop (which usually is just a market stall) will be using internet from the mobile network and not WiFi. So if it only uses data when you spend, then that would be fine, but if it's constantly pinging the network and running in the background then that would be a real issue as it would spend all their data very quickly.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @l0k18 22 Jan 2023
Yes, custodial also means a reduction in total traffic volume, since you only have to communicate to make a send/receive. Since network surveillance technology is expensive the only concern is that authorities don't attack the users when they are seen using it.
There is plenty of low tech ways to eliminate this problem. Paying forward, a running tab with settlement shortly after the trade...
High tech solutions don't really much exist, but certainly it's conceivable one can have open wifi hotspots attached to servers that the community uses for this purpose, concentrating their resources to have just ONE p2p node in their network and everyone connecting to it to send transactions across.
I'm sure that there is someone thinking towards these ends. Breez is building open source software that can do the aggregation, all that's needed is a mobile client that can interact with the wireless adapter, connect to hotspots tagged with some code that the client recognises as being a bitcoin/LN server and connect and avoid mobile data usage.
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