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We run IVPN, a privacy-focused VPN service. We are Bitcoiners and motivated to contribute to the development of the ecosystem and adopt/trial new tools as merchants.
Our full time focus is not on Bitcoin however, so we probably miss useful developments - for customers and/or for us as merchants.
Done so far over the course of several years: -> Accept Bitcoin with no intermediaries using BTCPay -> Donate to BTCPay annually -> Accept Lightning payments for our base service, running our own node -> Attend Bitcoin conferences to give out vouchers and gather feedback -> Built IVPN Light as an experiment for short-term VPN access with Lightning payments - #259328
What we considered and explored, but have not yet concluded: -> Start or join a Fedimint federation - multiple issues with this as regulars here probably know, main one we see is companies and well-known actors in the space who could provide the necessary "anti-rug" trust don't want to take the risks for very little/no clear upside -> Hourly/daily and recurring subscriptions paid with Lightning - this is still something we would want to see but ran into integration issues and hiccups (no particular fault of external parties, to be clear)
What we are looking at/excited by now? -> Setting up a bip 353 username would make sense for customer repeat payments, but we don't use any of the wallets currently supporting it -> BOLT12 improvements and possibilities look great overall, not likely to replace our BTCPay payment flow with a different implementation at this point
Anything else worth looking into? Even if it's in an experiment stage and needs test merchants.
I use iVPN myself.
One thing that would be nice would be to integrate LN payments into the app itself, rather than requiring me to login to the website. I should be able to just click on a button labeled "add time" or something, and have the app launch my lightning wallet for the payment via the standardized app launcher mechanism in Android.
Nostr apps already do this.
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thanks, I agree this would be a better user experience overall.
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Could someone use IVPN for their public LN node IPv4/IPv6 connection URI? There are many Tor-only nodes, maybe some of those would be interested in a VPN service if they could also use it as a clearnet proxy for their node.
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I have never heard of IVPN so it's surprising how many people here talk about it. They do seem to accept lightning.
I thought the vpn most popular in the community was mullvard because they accepted lightning and the partnership with tor browser. I can't find mullvards lightning integration anymore tho. Did anything happen to that?
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Mullvad never had lightning integration.
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Are you sure? I strongly remember you could pay for a month of Mullvard with Lightning. Am I hallucinating here???
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IVPN advertises on some bitcoin podcasts lately
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as far as I know Mullvad accepted BCH way back when I first checked them out (5-6 years ago?) + never had LN support, there was/is a 3rd party tool for topping up with Lightning.
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Built IVPN Light as an experiment for short-term VPN access with Lightning payments
Hourly/daily and recurring subscriptions paid with Lightning - this is still something we would want to see but ran into integration issues and hiccups (no particular fault of external parties, to be clear)
These are very cool features. IVPN Light is definitely a differentiation point (in a good way) in comparison to other VPN offerings.
At this point in time, I don't have any ideas or tips, other than to give preference to BTC payments over other inferior payment methods (eg. as in better placement).
Keep up with the good work
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184 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 30 Jul
I'm not sure if it'd make sense, but have you all looked into using L402 for payments/auth?
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yeah this is an excellent suggestions - we did look into it and had a proof of concept project on this. we concluded to fully implement would take a big chunk of work and the adoption rate + actual benefits vs. current flow from privacy gains perspective would be likely too low. this was some time ago so it might be time to dig up those notes.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @jp305 30 Jul
That's interesting, could be a good fit with substack alike platforms.
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Hi guys, I'm the creator of PPQ.AI, a pay-per-use AI chatbot running on LN.
I've thought fairly deeply about building a pay per use VPN (not a subscription) where every time a user clicks the "on" button to activate VPN, a lightning payment is fired.
This pay-per-use vpn can work really well with wallets like Alby which have "budgeted recurring payments" where the user can set a budget and such that the lightning payments run silently in the background.
This pay per use VPN is a really big innovation IMO and you could separate yourself from the entire other world of subscription VPN's.
Even charging 50 cents for a 15 minute session would allow me to save greatly on my VPN subscription since I only use a VPN 4-5 times per month.
Please let me know if you want more of my thoughts on this idea... I think that LN is perfectly suited for this and could even draw non-lightning people to lightning since it is something, like PPQ, that can help people save on subscriptions.
Here is a twitter post I made about the idea some time ago:
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131 sats \ 2 replies \ @jp305 30 Jul
I just saw your app on alby marketplace, it's very nice, congrats! You could probably make this into a higher level API right of wallet to product?
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I don't know what you mean by "right of wallet to product", but yes, we are releasing an API soon where a user can load some credits onto an API key and then plug that API key into third party apps for use.
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Sorry for the typo.
I was referring to the possibility of 3rd parties using an API (yours) where they can track if a user (lightning key?) has paid for a product (15 min VPN)
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hi Matt!
this is a good suggestion, and we have thought about this. mainly off the back of podcast 2.0 personal experiences + L402 experiments. the reason we did not pursue this is the main use case for our user base is "always on VPN" to counter mass surveillance primarily by ISP's. we could not forecast real demand for this and making it happen was not a straightforward exercise. I still think it's a novel/useful approach though, will reach out when we discuss it again internally.
half-related question - what's your use case for a VPN browser extension [besides this idea]? it's been in our backlog for some time but could not find compelling reasons to build it. "can't install software on my work laptop" and "i need ad hoc tunnels for a short browsing session and won't bother tunnelling all my traffic through the vpn" were the primary ones.
good luck with PPQ will look into it.
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I use a VPN periodically to:
  • Watch Netflix from different countries
  • Look at how my employer's website appears and functions from different countries as a part of my job in marketing.
  • Use some of my Bitcoin and Crypto wallets (I live in NYC and many crypto apps are IP blocked in NY due to the BitLicense).
  • Trade and/or research certain crypto platforms that IP block US crypto users
  • Use swap services that ban US crypto users
  • When I am using public Wifi
The browser extension is the ultimate non-techie, intuitive, and user friendly way to turn on a VPN.
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Great writeup, thanks for the input!
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 30 Jul
I like the short time frame VPN usage paid with lightning. Keep it up!
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Two things from my view:
  1. Try touristy areas as these places will naturally get people around the world to go their good examples of this is Dubrovnik, Split, Montenegro and Athens
  2. Make it stupid simple to get started. Many of these people are not technical at all, they just want to make their products and sell, they don't want a headache. If a 85 year old grandma can't figure it out, its too technical and complicated.
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Have you tested Indian market?
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Prospective customers in/from India request an end point in India, which is not possible due to data retention laws: https://www.wired.com/story/vpn-firms-flee-india-data-collection-law/
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That's why I asked you. The government isn't ready to accept. All are conservative here!
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This seems to be great too. It's Free and Open Source also. https://swiss-bitcoin-pay.ch/
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.