I can see, for some of us still hard to understand what SN has to offer, and most important how easy is to attach a wallet to leave SN balance to zero. Running a noncustodial node is hard work, it requires time and a lot of knowledge and energy.
I'll illustrate below, step-by-step, how easy can be to set Coinos.io wallet for Lightning transactions and set the autowitdraw to an HODL address!
Let's start!

1.0 Setting up:

  • 1.1. Create a Coinos account on https://Coinos.io/register, fyi... it's KYC free, so no question asked on signup apart username and password. You can have it fully anonymous, clicking on the 🎲 and it will generate a random username for you. Make sure your password is secure.

2.0 Connect wallet to RECEIVE on SN

  • 2.1. Once you have your whateverusername@coinos.os account...
  • 2.2. ... expand the details.
  • 2.3. Then copy that lightning address and paste it on SN > wallet > attach > lightning address input field as show below.
  • 2.4. Now set desired balance = 0,
  • 2.5. max fee to a min of 1% and...
  • 2.6. ... click on the save button.
That's it! You just did your first step into bitcoin sovereignty!

3.0 Connect wallet to SEND on SN

After leaving X for good, Coinos recently fully embraced nostr, implementing Nostr Walet Connect (NWC) and making it available to all its users. You can find your personal NWC code under the same Profile details:
  • 3.1. Copy that string and...
  • 3.3. Leave the desired balance as it is, it should still have the values you set earlier as they applies globally to all autowithdraw methods.
  • 3.4. click on the attach button... et voilá! Your sats are now out of SN node!
Note: remember that Coinos still a custodial wallet, and that's why I'll continue describing below how you can set the wallet to autwithdraw and have your sats on an onchain saving account to keep there for the long term... HODL!

4.0 Autowithdraw to cold wallet

It's important to also set up the autowithdrawal on Coinos, making sure any extra unneeded sats go into your cold storage. The best and safer way to do it will be to use a reusable Silent Payment address, but @coinoswallet does not support it yet! Just know that the more privacy-focus solution for receiving onchain bitcoin. In the meantime:
  • 4.1. Head to Coinos Settings from the top-right menu icon,
  • 4.2. Click PREFERENCES and scroll down until you see the Autowithdraw toggle, turn it ON, paste your bitcoin onchain address and click Save Settings button at the bottom of the page.
If you don't have yet a cold wallet that provide you a bitcoin onchain address, you can continue reading below how to securely set one.

5.0 Set up your HODL saving account

If you don't have one Bitcoin onchain cold wallet yet, this is a great opportunity to set it up. These are the tools I suggest, however do not be forced to use them, try as many as you can and learn more from the differences between them all. You can find a comprehensive list here and if you really want to do it properly follow @Natalia guide on How to MAKE your own Cold Wallet 🕶️.
  • 5.1. As you know, there are many ways to generate a Bitcoin wallet that provide you a set of 12 or 24 random English words, that will be your wallet seedphrase. You could also add an extra layer of security with a passphrase, basically an additional password to access and manage the wallet in the future. Ideally, you want to generate all those outside any digital wallet to increase privacy and security of your funds. One option I really like is https://www.BorderWallets.com/ where you can download a simple webpage and generate your seedphrase/passphrase offline. It's worth to try it! Alternatively, Blue Wallet provide a good way to increase the entropy when creating a wallet from the app (remember, do it offline!).
  • 5.2. When you get your seedphrase (and maybe passphrase), make sure you write it down multiple times on paper, no pictures, no screenshots, nothing digital... write it down, engrave it, burn it on wood, carve it somewhere! And make sure you store it in a safe places.
  • 5.3. Once you have your seedphrase of 12 or 14 letters, staying offline, open Blue wallet and import your cold wallet into it. This step also serves to validate you did everything correctly ... if the import is successful, you then have now your cold storage set forever!
5.3.1 Open BlueWallet5.3.2 Click Import wallet5.3.3 Type the seedphrase
  • 5.4 Now you can generate a new address clicking the button ↘️Receive and paste into the Autowithdraw settings on Coinos mentioned in step 4.2.
Thanks for this! I used it. Some feedback:
  • I stumbled over the step that showed the Profile Details section. I don't see Profile Details anywhere on my phone, maybe they've changed the app? I found the lightning address eventually by clicking around.
  • Also you highlight (with a "click to copy") the Profile page, but then actually looks like you actually paste in the lightning address (with a @coinos.io at the end).
  • I was surprised after doing this that...in order to zap, I need to actually approve and scan an invoice via Alby/CoinOS! Of course I should have expected that but somehow it didn't sink in before I did it. Hmm...I'm not sure I want to do that. I zap a lot, having to scan the invoice on my phone every time will be a drag. Maybe I'll just use CoinOS for withdrawing, once I have a certain number of zaps. Or are there other options?
  • Is there not a way in Stacker News to continue to edit something, even after the 10 minutes have passed? I don't think there is, but that's a big negative of putting this kind of guide on Stacker News. Maybe there should be some kind of evergreen content, that can be kept up to date? Here's why I think this is important: this type of info changes VERY quickly. I assume the changes between what you have for step 2.0 is different from what I see on my home page, because of an update to CoinOS.
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Thanks for the comprehensive feedback:
I stumbled over the step that showed the Profile Details section. I don't see Profile Details anywhere on my phone, maybe they've changed the app? I found the lightning address eventually by clicking around.
@coinoswallet already changed the Ui in the past few days, so it makes step 2.2 nearly obsolete! There's a way to get the username@coinos.io clicking on the QRcode icon near the username.
From what I'm understanding, you maybe set up only the LNaddress to RECEIVE the sats to your LNaddress@coinos.io leaving SN wallet at 0. That's why you get an invoice each time you zap :) To avoid this inconvenience, you should also set up NWC to send the sats TO SN as highlighteed on step 3.0
Depending on the network, sometimes you possibly experience delays leaving SN wallet at zero. So it's a good idea for now to keep some "cowboy credits" in there and make SN experience smoother!
Let me know how you go with this!
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One more question if you have a minute...
I had my Desired Balance set to 2000. Underneath that, it reads "will attempt auto-withdraw when your balance exceeds 2200 sats".
However, I'm getting little micropayments all the time. 5 little 30 sat payments, just today, and my wallet amount is not close to 2000.
Any way to avoid this? I'd prefer to just receive payments when it's a more substantial amount - less transactions to clog things up.
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34 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 4 Oct
Those sound like p2p zaps.
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34 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 4 Oct
Thanks for bringing it up. When we switch to cowboy credits, we’ll let you specify a dust threshold that won’t send you small amounts.
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Yes this is a common issue for everyone, @k00b @ek could enable a “min transaction amount” to avoid the micropayments
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Hmmm...I thought I'd set up the npub correctly for step 3, but looks like it's not.
I tried again, putting the npub in there and attaching, but I get this error message in red, right under where I put the npub: "must start with nostr+walletconnect://". That's the error I probably got earlier, and didn't notice.
So I try putting it in like this nostr+walletconnect://npubxxxxxxxxx. Then I get the error "pubkey must be 64 hex chars".
Thoughts?
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if active, click detach button on the NWC wallet page and redo it. You need to get your NWC code as indicated in the picture above, NOT your npub!
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Aha, thanks! Somehow I didn't notice the npub vs NWC.
However, my CoinOS screen doesn't look like yours. I have the Lightning address, Public URL, and Nostr pubkey, and nothing else. I do not have the Nostr Wallet Connect.
I clicked around trying to find it in CoinOS, but can't locate it.
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Check the image on #707675 on the right side there's a cog icon to Get your NWC, click on it and you'll see the Reveal NWC screenn ;)
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Thank you! Finally I think I've got it, using the QR code next to the username. I gotta say, that whole part of the app is pretty confusing. I would have expected all that type of info to be under Settings.
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Great! Yes, not sure why, but I was preferring the way it was before. Now so many clicks to reach the NWC code!
Also - I'm getting messages from stacker.news "zap on post failed". Based on my CoinOS transaction history, though, everything succeeded, and the sats were withdrawn. Not sure what to make of this.
I wonder if it's because the first one I did, I put in a really low fee (the original fee was higher than the zap). The next ones, I just left it as the original fee, and it went through with zero fees. But from the CoinOS side, it looks like EVERYTHING went through with zero fees.
Also, just realizing that I have to scan the lightning invoice even when I just post a reply! That makes sense, but it's a pain.
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Wow!! It finally worked for sending! Thank you very much for this tutorial. It helped a lot
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Great that you did it! Let's help SN reach a 100% noncustodial state so we can start playing with cowboy credits!
How easy it was?
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Dead easy! I struggled with Blink and alby earlier for different reasons . Probably as I am such a bad beginner.
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These two are probably the other two guides I'll work on, especially Alby Hub!
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Nice guide. But why bothering to use another custodial wallet with SN? The whole point of not using SN cowboy credits is that you will connect one of your own self-custodial wallet/node.
Is too much hassle to go on 2 custodials. You can simply run your own lnbits or alby hub, or a umbrel node and done.
O just use cowboy credits :)
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it's for the newbies and all other bitcoines that are still not running a LN node... apparently are many!
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From the stand point that you use coinos as a swap to onchain for holding those sats, yes, the guide, is good.
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Thanks! the goal was to cover all journey till cold storage. Usually it takes much time to learn LN, LNaddress, NWC, onchain, privacy and many other things. Hopefully with this will be easier to achieve and yes, the swap from LN to onchain is made hustle-free directly from coinos. Not sure what they are using in the bg!
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Thanks for bringin' it. It's gonna be a real help for everyone here. This is also we all have been talking about. We need more tutorials for wallet connect.
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Glad you enjoy it! What from your perspective could be another really simple way to wallet-connect SN to external non-custodial solutions?
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Great post!! @grayruby @supratic thank you very much, now thanks to this guide I can configure my Wallet in SN 🙏🤠 thank you very much
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Thanks for this guide. Just got everything setup with coinos yesterday. It works great!
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Does Coinos still shows the NWC on the site? I'm not able to find that data to do step 3.
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Could be that you made a tiny mistake on the step 2.2, you're pointing to the profile page instead the lightning address field on the Coinos site.
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Thanks for your feedback. 2.2 refers to "expand the Profile Details" and yes the goal was to highlight the lightning address coinos provide. so it can be copied and used on the attach lightning address page available from https://stacker.news/settings/wallets/lightning-address
Yes basically 2.2 and 2.3 refers to the same image somehow. Do you think it could have been done better?
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Its not a big deal. I was following your guide and copy the wrong text and when pasting it SN marked as an error. So I double check what was I copying.
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It's easy to make mistakes. In step 2.2 you should copy your address@coinos.io and paste it on SN input field. That will be only for receiving sats from SN.
ignore the whateverusername@coinos.os is just a dummy account
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Thanks for the tutorial about coinos. I'll be doing it.
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You welcome! keep us posted and share thoughts
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I just finished setting up. Easy and nice.
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Congrats, let me know if the 21 sats arrived at destination!
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Yes, I received 21 sats, but did not auto withdraw.
Thanks.
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maybe because you have a desired balance higher than 21?
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It's working now!
Great post!
The only problem I see with the auto withdrawal on Coinos is that you will need to paste a new address every time you move your funds to your on chain wallet.
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Yes that kind of a issue for privacy. That why I'm wondering if silent payments will be implemented on coinos at some stage. It will be the top!
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This is exactly what the stackers needed. Well done.
Hopefully we will see more tutorials like this one for other wallet options.
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Thanks, II assume most of the stackers a new to the game. Finding the page to connect the wallets isn't really accessible if one does not explore SN deeper. I'll try to write more for specific wallet connections. This in my opinion was the easier one from a user perspective.
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This is also handy for non new stackers. I just went through this process via trial an error testing out coinos the other day. I eventually got to the same result but your guide would have made it easier.
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One thing I'm still not understanding why SN, or NWC itself, does not allow using the same string for sending and receiving...
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@k00b explained this to me the other day but I forgot the reasoning.
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92 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 21 Sep
TL;DR: security reasons
Sending credentials are stored on your device while receiving credentials are stored on the server. We don't want to store permissions to spend your funds on the server.1
The reason why it can't be the same is because if it's the same, something is clearly wrong: receive should only be able to receive so if it's the same, either your spend can't actually spend or you're giving us spend permissions when we expect receive only.

Footnotes

  1. unless it's encrypted with a secret that only you know, coming soon
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right, make much more sense. Looking forward to more features to come and make this guide outdated really soon!
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That's what I've been using! Just added the NWC for sending and set desired balance to zero. Thank you!
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@adam_coinos_io there's any chance you are considering implementing silent payments?
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Yeah I was looking into them the other day. I haven't quite got my head around them yet and at first glance it seemed like implementation might be a bit more involved than I was hoping for but I'll probably take a crack at it sometime.
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Thank you! I've connected Coinos and zapped this post :-)
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Awesome Guide!
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Amazing guide, thank you for sharing!
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Golu 22 Sep
Thanks for the tutorial. I've bookmarked it.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 21 Sep
The SN and coinos wallets are both custodial.
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yes correct! you're missing the final step on 4.2 where your sats get auto withdraw onchain
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Thanks for sharing. Great post. Well described
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Glad you like it! Let me know if it can be improved somehow
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