110 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 5 May \ on: CE003: Centralization Risk bitcoin
I was selling posters at btc++ this last week. I only accepted payment via lightning.
Most people paid with something like phoenix, Zeus, or breeze. Some people paid from cashapp or strike.
I would say it was very rare for people to use fully self-sovereign solutions that relied on their own hardware running their own ln node with multiple channels of their own choosing.
This is at a bitcoin dev conference where the population is probably more likely to use (and know how to use) bitcoin than anywhere else on earth.
Maybe things will get better (the tech will save us) but at the moment fully self sovereign solutions as you describe above are not being used in lightning.
On the other hand, I'm not sure there is a problem with that. Wallets like phoenix and Zeus (even when using them with only one channel to the wallet provider's LSP) are not necessarily a cop out.
I don't do huge volume of sales, but when I hit a certain threshold in my ln wallets, I swap out to my on chain wallet. And I do run my own node on my own hardware for that. Why can't we have the best of both worlds here?
We can have the best of both worlds. However, I feel the lightning experience is so magical in custodial and semi-custodial setting that it can discourage the diligence required to maintain a node. If users can set thresholds like you, it's OK.
It is similar to how cheap fast food discourages cooking at home. You can eat out once in a while but you should cook almost daily at home.
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Good analogy. And it is magical when you get money from someone in seconds with almost no fees.
In the case of easy to use lightning wallets there may be a natural cap in that they are hot wallets and those hot wallets will become targets if they get too big a balance.
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