You could choose Bitkit, Mutiny or Blixt. These wallets are similar to Phoenix, but allow you to connect to any LSP/node.

Muun <<

Someone comes and offers a great service that the market demands and no one is offering.

Because they are pretty much alone, they can charge a lot and have a juicy margin. They still sell since there is no competition.

Eventually, some ballsy entrepreneur notices the situation and thinks to himself: "I can do the same thing for half the price". And he goes and does it.

As more of these hungry entrepreneurs join the scene, competitions starts and the margins go lower and lower, translating into lower and lower prices for customers. The starting guys can't keep charging the fat margin anymore.

So, don't stress out and just give things some time. Phoenix is charging what they charge because they can get away with it, until competition joins and they won't be able to. And the hefty fee is precisely what's going to make all of it possible.

Finally, I find it hard to see how they are killing the purpose of using LN. I paid 2342 sats for my coffee this morning with Phoenix and the fee was 12 sats. That's clearly much better than what I would have had to pay with an onchain transaction, so I feel the purpose of LN with Phoenix is very much alive.

Tbh, I think Muun is killing the purpose of LN with submarine swaps (if they still do that)

On chain fees are about as low as they will likely get right now. That can change in a hurry.

Try Electrum. And Blink

Just ran into this today. Was going to do a Phoenix to Phoenix invoice which was typically less than 5 sats. With the new version it would have cost 4000 sats. Crazy.

Back to using Mutiny, Zeus, Breez

0.4% ?

Fees are high, but you don't need to run a LN node, hold your keys & most of all it just works.

Muun is ok for a dead mempool

Trying out the Zeus LSP node, which also ends up with a +- 0.4% fee.

I hold some on my custodial wallet - Wallet of Satoshi

Permission transactions will never be cheap or should be.

It still makes sense IRL to buy at a merchant's store but I agree it's really expensive

Breez?