Yesterday, my daughter and I decided to play Monopoly, but instead of using Monopoly money, I thought it would be fun to use sats instead! Here’s how it went.
Preparation:
Here’s how I set up the game:
1 Zeus wallet connected to my node, with an open channel to WoS. 2 WoS wallets (1 for me and 1 for my daughter), each with a 0 balance to start.
Originally, I considered using Blink wallets, but the problem with Blink is that it displays the balance in EUR in a large font, while the sats balance is smaller. This isn’t ideal when you're playing Monopoly and want to treat 1 sat = 1 Monopoly dollar. So, we switched to WoS, where the sats balance is prominently displayed, with the EUR balance in a smaller font underneath.
In our version of Monopoly, each player starts with 1500 Monopoly dollars and earns 200 when passing GO. It was easy to follow this system using sats.
I installed WoS on my daughter’s phone and transferred 1500 sats from my Zeus wallet to her WoS wallet. I did the same for myself, so we both had a 1500 sat starting balance. I used Zeus as the "bank" and WoS as my player wallet on the same phone, but if you have an extra device or don’t trust the bank, you can separate them.
And yes, I know you can go fully non-custodial by setting up LNBits with Umbrel and using Blue Wallet on separate devices for each family member. However, that takes longer to set up, requires VPN connections for everyone, and seemed unnecessary for our casual game. In my setup, only the bank needed a VPN, which was simple and only took about 5 minutes.
Game:
The game got fun pretty quickly! Every time my daughter passed GO, she showed me her QR code with a sly smile, and the bank paid out her 200 sats with zero fees. Players also paid each other with zero fees.
Twice, WoS randomly charged a 1-sat fee when transferring from WoS to Zeus—once from my wallet and once from my daughter’s. To keep things fair, I had the bank reimburse those 2 sats.
We did run into one small issue: I needed to pay my daughter 200 sats for landing on her hotel, but since I only had exactly 200 sats left, WoS wouldn’t let me send it, even though it was a WoS-to-WoS transaction.
Conclusion:
At the (unofficial) end of the game—since it was getting late—my daughter had 2810 sats, and I had 1650 sats. At this point, each stop was costing between 300 and 600 sats, so I suppose the real end was near!
Overall, it was a smooth experience, and my daughter got quite comfortable with sending and receiving bitcoin, even though it was her first time doing so. She did show more interest in the EUR balance, but I’m sure she’ll come to appreciate the sats balance soon enough!
I highly recommend this as a fun way to introduce people to the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Most people already have a Monopoly game at home, and if you have a couple of spare devices, you can easily install WoS for everyone. (Perhaps not in the U.S. right now, but I’m not entirely sure on that front.)
Would definitely recommend trying it out!