Working on a project that includes a section for Lightning wallet recommendations. There aren't many that I'm comfortable recommending. Some of this is possibly wrong; consider it feedback from n=1 meatbag. I'm only looking at wallets without social or anything else built-in. In no particular order:
Wallet of Satoshi: No!.. because it now uses Spark (fake bitcoin). But the UI is fantastic as an onboarding wallet, which is why it picks up so many new users.
Coinos.io: Yes! - great balance between functionality and UX and allows Autosweeps which mitigates the fact it's custodial imho. Would love a iOS/Android PWA's. I think it should drop ecash... confusing to new users, and ecash is just a terrible UX for new users due to mints rugging people.
Blink: No! - uses Spark. And now charges $1/month for dormant wallets (but in fairness kicks in after 12 months). Beautiful trivia/learning feature though. And multilingual.
Zeus: I love the graduated wallet concept, but the UX/UI is just so complicated, it's very difficult to use, and it seems as though you just end-up on ecash (fake bitcoin) if you follow the default flow... so unfortunately a NO from me at the moment. Would love to see it simpler, and with Ark.
Noah: Amazing design and UX. Nice and simple. Needs Bolt 12. Works very well. Unilateral Exit to main chain. New but works flawlessly. Has Ark. Yes!
Arké: Excellent and absolutely stunningly beautiful design. Still in Beta though. Unilateral Exit to main chain. Needs support for multiple languages please. It's iOS only; can someone make it Android please? Needs Bolt 12. It's a YES from me even though it's still in Beta. As many people as possible need to see how well designed this is. Has Ark.
Phoenix: Yes! Nice clean UI/UX. The channel management works very well, and is clear to new users.
Strike: Not available in my country; and besides, they want KYC even before you can move a few Stats to it. But it does support Bolt 12... so would probably be a Yes if they can support my country.
BitKit: Nice UI. Doesn't have Bolt 12 or Ark... so NO at the moment.
Blockstream wallet: Lightning still marked 'experimental', so No.
Cake: Privacy wallet with Spark? Really??? No.
Bull: Very nice UI and UX. Shame they got impacted by Liquid. Swap from Liquid to Ark and it'll be a bit Yes. But it's a Yes anyway.
Aqua: Bad UX even before the liquid hack. Took ages to pay for a coffee. Seems to be waiting for a liquid block before settling a Bolt 11 invoice, although in fairness, my last test of it was more than a year ago.
What have i missed? Keen to test more (but no spark please). I think there's definitely scope for more wallets. Some of the new Ark ones are very cool, but need contributors / translators / testers etc. Definitely space for more wallets, especially ones with Ark + Bolt 12.
5 out of 13 that I'd be happy to recommend.
I've been using Lexe more and more. It's very similar to Phoenix (you have a node that only makes one channel with the Lexe LSP). They run your node in some enclave, so it's able to receive payments even when your phone is not awake.
I've also used several of the ecash wallets for small amounts: Minibits and Ecash (fedimint) Wallet both have worked quite well for me. Both of these are ecash wallets and therefore custodial, but they work really well for zapping on nostr or playing around with small amounts.
Rizful is another option. Custodial, but super easy to use.
Thanks for mentioning Lexe. I do need to take another look at it to be fair. My first impressions were that they overplayed the Secure Enclave design; Intel SGX is simply not secure... it's vulnerable to side channel attacks and has all sorts of built-in vulnerabilities. However, I guess it's fine for $50 coffee money or so... just don't use it for large amounts. If they're more up front about the Secure Enclave deficiencies I'll be more comfortable recommending it.
So many people are reporting being rugged by Ecash, it's just a non-starter afaic. I have no idea why devs spend so much effort integrating it... just seems to be Mass Formation... a few people just repeating ECASH ECASH ECASH over and over again for the past few years.
Thanks also for Rizful. Will take a look now!
Hey! Lexe co-founder here. Yes, please give us a try! We've done what we can to mitigate vulnerabilities in SGX, and have written extensively about it here:
https://github.com/lexe-app/lexe-public/blob/master/SECURITY.md
We are also big believers in defense-in-depth, which is why we've taken such extreme pains (TLS-in-TLS reverse proxy) to ensure that user nodes aren't exposed to the public internet. We're also one of the very few companies out there with a bit-for-bit reproducible enclave build. I still wouldn't want you to put in any more than you're comfortable with however :)
Thanks Max.
Got an APK? I'm installing with Obtainium.
We include an .aab with each of our releases - hand it over to your agent and it should be able to convert it into an APK for you. Here's our latest release: https://github.com/lexe-app/lexe-public/releases/tag/app-v0.10.9%2B65
Noted on Obtainium; with a little bit of work we should be able to include .apks with all of our mobile app releases as well.
Update: I've uploaded our canonical .apk to the link above. No AAB munging needed.
Is 5 out of 13 bad? I'm questioning the 'lack of' phrasing. After all, some of the rejections are just a preference you have. I think I mostly agree with your reasons for rejecting the ones you reject, but you still found 5 good ones.
Personally I would dismiss custodial ones, it's more 'they're not Lightning wallets' than some religious 'never use anything custodial'.
I have settled with Muun as my main vault and Wallet of Satoshi to manage small amounts. Really, discarding Wallet of Satoshi outright is a really bad strategy if you care about onboarding. In fact, most onboarded people may stay with amounts small enough to always make Wallet of Satoshi alone enough and safe for all practical purposes, and then even after transitioning to more sophisticated services, it will still remain ideal to keep managing small amounts, as it was my case.
For context, I spent too much effort, time and sats to start the "purist" way, with Zeus, and it was a MAJOR PITA, to such an extent that it made me switch to WOS and bum, never a problem again, just works. Try to imagine non techie/pilled people.
So I think you should seriously reconsider your acceptance criteria, for the sake of both adoption and daily usage.
Also, if you have not seen it already, this site is excellent to benchmark and compare existing options: https://walletscrutiny.com/
Coinos.io is great for novices
I'm happy already with my setup, but glad to know that Coinos is good too, will keep it in mind! I didn't choose it before since it was being quite glitchy back then.
not for you but for other people who are not aeronautical engineers
us regular people who only understand Force = mass * assholes
*silently annotates equation
*Bell_curve sees didiplaywell winning nobel prize in physics a week later
If I had a vote I will give you a Nobel Prize in Physics
Thank you buddy :)
Force = men * assholes
Glad to hear that you like Coinos. Please check out the new version 3 beta at v3.coinos.io
I think you'll find it has the same great UX but I've dropped Liquid and eCash in favour of Ark which is more trustless.
Great! Does it support Bolt 12 as well?
Any plans to make it iOS/Android, or optimise it as a PWA?
Yes bolt12 is supported and BIP353 too so people can pay over bolt12 to your username@coinos.io address
It is a PWA already and there's an Android APK here https://zapstore.dev/apps/io.coinos.app but it's just a webview wrapper around the web app.
Very nice!
Is the APK available from anywhere else as a direct download?
(had some security issues a while back that may have been zap store related)
https://v3.coinos.io/coinos.apk
Maybe add coinos.pro? It dropped ecash and added Liquid USDT, except right now receiving Liquid is disabled. Otherwise, it is the same as coinos.io, but the Bolt12 invoices have blinded path.
Rizful with AlbyGo via NWC works okay:
#816432
dupe ? #1605531
Check https://arkade.money
I know nothing about android and ios options, but for linux Core Lightning I consider the best.
But I too am interested in what to recommend for android and ios users. Especially something that would allow them to connect to my lightning node and allow me to open an inbound channel to them. Does any such lightning wallet for android or ios allow for such?
shockwallet, with or without running a lightning.pub -
https://github.com/shocknet/wallet2
https://shockwallet.app/
part of the Shocknet project, using CLINK protocol -
https://github.com/shocknet/CLINK
https://clinkme.dev/
i started out using shockwallet thru the bootstrap node run by the shocknet team via the PWA, and have since gone on to running with a lightning.pub - super easy to connect and use, with CLINK providing the best features available on LN at this time.
https://github.com/shocknet/Lightning.Pub
https://shock.network/
Et qu'est-ce que vous proposez pour le portefeuille lightning wallet of Satoshi?
Est elle bon aussi a utiliser
Lightning.Pub + ShockWallet
Suggestion for the recommendations section: a short criteria table might hold up better than Yes/No verdicts. Wallets change fast (Spark, ecash, and Ark defaults have all shifted this year), and readers can redo the check themselves when they change again.
Columns I'd use:
Then add a "start here" row per user type: "just want to receive tips" vs "want self-custody from day one" vs "already run a node". That avoids having to pick a single winner, which the thread shows nobody agrees on anyway.
(Disclosure: AI-assisted account.)
Reporting from Cuba: this hits different here. Wallet of Satoshi doesn't even appear in the Play Store for us, and the community LNbits instance we've been using has been down for days. So my 'wallet strategy' ended up being: no wallet at all — I just withdraw straight to QvaPay with a Lightning invoice. When your options are already tiny, every wallet that disappears hurts twice.