Trying to figure out what is unique about Wallet of Satoshi invoices
2407 sats \ 15 comments \ @ACYK 17 Mar lightning
The sports betting site betplay.io allows for lightning deposits and withdrawals, but only via wallet of Satoshi (WOS). Depositing works from other lightning wallets, but not withdrawals.
I’ve never had a withdrawal to WOS fail (always instant), but I have never had a withdrawal to another lightning wallet succeed.
Think it’s just a routing issue? What else is unique about WOS lightning invoices?
Contacting support results in them just telling you to use wallet of Satoshi, and that WOS is the only wallet supported for withdrawals.
Are they just looking for the first hop to be WOS’s node, and if not they cancel the payment? Seems like a strange limitation.
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90 sats \ 1 reply \ @cointastical 17 Mar
Perhaps Betplay is making it seem like they don't permit anybody from the U.S. to withdraw their winnings, and thus keeping the regulators at bay. Like a poor-man's geofence.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ACYK OP 18 Mar
Hmm another interesting theory. I’m pretty sure it has been like this since before WOS closed up shop for the US though.
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60 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 17 Mar
I don't know how it works. I'd guess that a WoS to WoS transfer would not need to route through any channels. It would just be a change of balance like in accounting.
As for sending it to another LN wallet, was it open and synchronized?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ACYK OP 18 Mar
As for sending it to another LN wallet, was it open and synchronized?
Yea, and other incoming payments were working fine into the other wallets I tried. Good thought though.
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60 sats \ 5 replies \ @RocketNode 17 Mar
They probably have a direct channel to WoS. If they limit fees to 0, only payments to direct peers or a 0/0 fee path (rare) will succeed.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @ACYK OP 17 Mar
Solid theory. Would be nice for their error messages to be more descriptive, but seems like a good explanation.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @030e0dca83 17 Mar
This is on my mind too, maybe he has large channel only with wos. Did you inspect bitpay's node?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @ACYK OP 18 Mar
Did you inspect bitpay's node?
I haven’t. I’ll have to do some digging. Find a way to get information out of a deposit invoice to learn more.
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180 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 18 Mar
Try this site: https://lndecode.com/
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ACYK OP 18 Mar
Doesn’t seem like the raw data contains any info on Bitplay’s node unless I’m missing something: { "human_readable_part": { "prefix": "lnbc", "amount": 2500000 }, "data": { "time_stamp": 1710758579, "tags": [ { "type": "p", "length": 52, "description": "payment_hash", "value": "6f89c5b8af9dd7be2643cf364516c581cb703dddba1a4bafb5ff60497aacc72b" }, { "type": "d", "length": 16, "description": "description", "value": "Betplay.io" }, { "type": "c", "length": 2, "description": "min_final_cltv_expiry", "value": 80 }, { "type": "x", "length": 5, "description": "expiry", "value": 1209600 }, { "type": "s", "length": 52, "description": "payment_secret", "value": "4654fadf20713cc0f8d662f11e8045559c7d7684c633efe90ef5339416bab32f" }, { "type": "9", "length": 4, "description": "feature_bits", "value": "00100100001000000000" } ], "signature": { "r": "3cc2d99567edb942bf7b15004b7630fe9839d7c00e2fef33b561f2247bdf7e7e", "s": "257abcb4f2266612719a9e0b64e1956082a720032cca3fc3696e06a7ab246721", "recovery_flag": 0 }, "signing_data": "6c6e62633235750cbf0356610d1be2716e2be775ef8990f3cd9145b16072dc0f776e8692ebed7fd8125eab31cac1a082132ba383630bc9734b7e002140c02849d40201a232a7d6f90389e607c6b31788f4022aace3ebb426319f7f4877a99ca0b5d599781404242000" }, "checksum": "ya06qv" }
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30 sats \ 2 replies \ @supertestnet 17 Mar
The pubkey of the destination node is included in every invoice. They may just extract it, check that it belongs to WoS, and fail the payment if not.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ACYK OP 17 Mar
Interesting. I wonder what the reason for that would be over just allowing withdrawals to any lightning invoice if that’s the case. Thanks for the info.
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332 sats \ 0 replies \ @supertestnet 17 Mar
I will hazard two guesses:
  • betplay's devs were tasked with reducing "payment failure" support tickets and realized they can almost guarantee zero payment failures by only allowing one destination and keeping a set of channels with that destination well-stocked with lots of outbound capacity
  • they have an exclusivity contract with WoS. Payment processors sometimes give merchants benefits if they agree to "only" use them, and if the merchant is popular, this attracts more users to the payment processor's user-facing payment products. E.g. lots of people might get Visa cards if they were the only supported payment method at Disney world, and maybe WoS thinks lots of people will start using their wallet if it's the only supported LN method at betplay. It would not surprise me if LN companies try to arrange such deals at some point
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30 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 17 Mar
No longer available in USA
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ACYK OP 17 Mar
A good reason to find a way to make it work with another wallet if possible
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