I have high hopes for hybrid approaches. Things that excite me on this front:

I believe it will be a combination of some network/protocol capabilities coupled with best in class UX for end-users. I don't know whether it will be 100000% non-custodial, but likely a hybrid mix where for some small time period your LSP is holding onto some funds on your behalf. Seems reasonable and achievable.

The solution Breez and Blockstream are working on might be an answer to your needs: https://blog.blockstream.com/lightning-platform-breez-to-integrate-greenlight-to-build-non-custodial-lightning-apps/

Yes, we've studied Minecraft in depth and as you described it is quite a bit bigger than other games. It's a game platform of sorts when it comes to users creating new experiences and worlds.

It is a vertical we'd love to explore and maybe it's something our R&D team can look more closely at in the near future. We'd need to work with a minecraft wizard to help us explore what is feasible/possible. Is that you?

I think it's misguided and unrealistic to assume everyone wants to, or ever will, hold their keys / run their nodes. But idk if few other Bitcoiners agree with this, maybe a lot of them do, not sure.

Not really a specific question, but more of a general take:

If we (Bitcoiners) want people to see Bitcoin as money, we need to think of providing the same, or better, money experience that common folk users have today. Different people value different things - sovereign hard money argument doesn’t sell to all types of people.

It’s okay to want different things out of Bitcoin.

Huge brain for sure

1337

LOLOLOL

This is a tough one. But probably Smash. Just imagine global esports tournaments where your health is based on sats you come in with. The more hits, the more sats you take from opponents - hunger games style. Pretty epic imo

ZBD Brawl is a Smash-like game that aims to present that scenario live in colors. We’re releasing it in the next few months, lookout for that!

You mispelled Etleneum

I'm biased but I think gaming is the most seamless way to onboard a user to Lightning. Once a user has Bitcoin in a game because they completed a quest, they are now incentivized to claim the satoshis.

Whether it's using their ZEBEDEE gamertag or by scanning the Withdraw QR code with any Bitcoin Lightning wallet, the user now has skin in the game. It's the first of many steps towards the so-called Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Play a video game with friends, get onboarded to Bitcoin. That simple. There's 3 billion gamers out in the world. Adding Bitcoin to gaming is a massive trojan horse.

A - the URL path for .well-known/... B - Whether to remain true to the internet-identifier RFC and do username @ domain.com, or whether to change it to username $ domain.com (or some other identifier)

In the end the path chosen was the one that made sense at the time. Hindsight is 20 20 so there's always improvements that can be done, including the structure of the path. I do think it was the right choice to stick to the RFC of internet identifiers, though there are those that disagree as it generates confusion with email addresses. In my opinion, if we are to have a world where money is inherently part of the internet, they money will quickly become part of emails/chat protocols. And there's nothing stopping someone from having the same email address and lightning address, technically.

This question asks for NYC for Bitcoiners, which is different than the other question, and also has a different answer.

In my opinion bearish --> NYC will not be a place Bitcoiners will seek in the future if things progress as they have.

I remain cautiously optimistic about Taro at this stage. We're following its developments closely, but I think we're a little ways off before we can use the protocol on mainnet, is my understanding at least.

Theoretically speaking, I could see usecases for it inside of the ZEBEDEE ecosystem, but we'll need to see how it actually works in practice and what is feasible at scale.

I no longer actively code for ZEBEDEE products. I do code for my own sanity, and for small projects, R&D at ZBD, prototypes and etc. We have expert engineers on deck writing cleaner and more performant code than I ever have.

Loads of meetings. Loads of emails. Loads of slides/diagrams. Loads of brainstorming sessions. Loads of gdocs and notion documents. I am focused now on high-level product and engineering strategy at the company, and working with my awesome team members to execute on these initiatives.

Wake up, eat, ZBD, Bitcoin, breathe, ZBD, more Bitcoin, gym, more ZBD, sleep

“He cannot become old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already become old; in a way he cannot die, for he has never lived; in a way he cannot live, for he is already dead.”

― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Not sure I understand what you mean by 3rd apps to be honest. Is that 3rd party apps? Are you saying Wheel of Trivia has ads to get you to download other games?

If so this is a pretty standard practice for in-game ads to show App Store downloadable content.

Sorry, but maybe I’m not understanding the question. Where does TikTok come in?

It was in a chat with Anton from SBW and fiatjaf where we were discussing sending sats to an email-like interface. That conversation sort of died out, until fiatjaf and I on a random Friday decided to revive it and with the help of Hampus and Fitti (and many other folks whose names I don't remember atm) we arrived at the spec for LUD16: https://github.com/fiatjaf/lnurl-rfc/blob/luds/16.md.

That same weekend I built https://lightningaddress.com. The following Thursday I announced the protocol at BitDevs NYC.

At that point, we had ZBD, LNTXBot, SBW, and Blixt Wallet who said would implement support for this interface for sending sats, but only LNTXBot and ZBD could serve Lightning Addresses for their users (custodial servers).

Now everyone has support for sending and/or receiving LN Address payments, with lots of innovations on the way as well. Now my podcasting app can send and receive money to my bitcoin neobank provider. How cool are standards?

Short term bearish? Long term bullish? Unsure really.

It's all about opportunity cost, and it depends what you prioritize.

Kudos to you too my friend! It's everyone who's building / supporting / backing the protocol that make it what it is.

ZEBEDEE is a fintech infrastructure provider for the gaming industry, and we focus on providing Bitcoin-based solutions to partner game developers/game studios like Viker Games.

Most people don't know this, but ZEBEDEE is actually a recursive acronym:

"ZEBEDEE Empowers Bitcoin-Enabled Digital Economy Engines"

This is why it's all caps ;)

But really, if I'm not mistaken we worked backwards from DEE (Digital Economy Engines) since our focus is to empower the builders of digital economic engines inside virtual worlds/environments.

Yes, we are working hard to expand to all states in the US, including NY. Expanding to more regions is a high priority initiative at ZBD.

ZBD is focused on providing the best developer experience for games developers to integrate Bitcoin into their games. As infrastructure and service provider, we're not focusing on adding ZBD service into games ourselves specifically.

We do have games we publish under the ZEBEDEE umbrella to showcase what is possible with our technology and to educate partner games developers on what possible user flows look like.

There may be some new upcoming developments on the ZBD Infuse front though! Stay tuned. Love AoE, would love to see a team infuse it with Bitcoin through ZEBEDEE!