671 sats \ 4 replies \ @calle OP 23 Sep 2022 \ on: Introducing Cashu - an Ecash wallet and mint with full Bitcoin Lightning support bitcoin
Yo!
Cashu is a new Chaumian Ecash system with Bitcoin Lightning capabilities. Very briefly summarized, Cashu a way to improve the privacy in Bitcoin custody by using Chaumian Ecash.
A classical custodial wallet provider (for example: Wallet of Satoshi) knows how much money you have and who you're transacting with. With Cashu, they don't.
The purpose of @CashuBTC is not only to be a simple-to-use wallet and mint that can be run by everyone (we're working on that right now) but to become a simple library that can be integrated into existing Bitcoin apps.
The long-term mission is to blind all custodians.
  • Follow the Cashu Twitter account for updates
  • Here is the Github repo
  • There is some work on a Javascript client to implement it on websites.
  • Ben Arc has presented how it could look like integrated into LNbits.
  • There has been a Cashu torch going on Twitter, here is the current tip.
write
preview
31 sats \ 1 reply \ @VzxPLnHqr 23 Sep 2022
@calle Thank you for sharing this interesting work. Would you mind quickly summarizing the similarities and differences between cashu and fedimint? Are the tradeoffs mostly the same?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @calle OP 24 Sep 2022
I think the two main differences are that Cashu is not a federated system and it has no on-chain support (yet?). To be clear, I freaking love Fedimint!
I haven't spent too much time thinking about tradeoffs but there is clearly an improved trust relationship with the mint if they are federated. On the other hand, a non-federated approach is a lot simpler to implement, which means that it should be a lot easier to add to existing Bitcoin applications.
The simplicity of Cashu (and the standardized client protocol we're currently working on) should enable other devs to build their own clients and thus make it actually useful.
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8 sats \ 0 replies \ @calle OP 24 Sep 2022

Quick tutorial
Install Cashu
Super easy install (check GitHub if this doesn't work):
pip install cashu
Use Cashu
The following commands are supported:
$ cashu --help                                                     
Usage: cashu [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  -h, --host TEXT    Mint address.
  -w, --wallet TEXT  Wallet to use.
  --help             Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  mint     Mint tokens.
  balance  See balance.
  send     Send tokens.
  receive  Receive tokens.
  burn     Burn spent tokens.
  pending  Show pending tokens.
  pay      Pay lightning invoice.
  info     Information about Cashu wallet.
Try it
Here, take these 128 sats using cashu receive <token>. First come, first serve :)
W3siYW1vdW50IjogMTI4LCAic2VjcmV0IjogIi1saEhJa01KczdUV1R1NEVoeEswX1EiLCAiQyI6ICIwMjg2NTZjNmE1NTQzMWZjMmMwMWIxOWMzNzJhNjc2YWVkN2NlOTk0ZDM4ZjIwNTZmNDgwY2NkMzEzYjVhNzY4MzkifV0=
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @jeff 24 Sep 2022
Great work. And thanks for explaining the architecture to the rest of us.
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