Hello Fellow Stackers,
As many of you know, Stacker News will be completely eliminating it's custodial lightning wallet soon. Prior to this change, Stacker News could serve as a 'poor man's' ln proxy as the sats would go to the Stacker News node, then Stacker News would create a new payment to your node (depending on your wallet settings). This was an awesome tool for us Plebs, but I totally understand that it was probably never the intent of Stacker News to serve this purpose ; more of an emergent behavior. So, I mourn it's loss but I am excited for the next phase of the Stacker News value for value experiment.
So, what does this mean for lightning node runners that want to receive sats sent to their Stacker News ln address or want to receive sats from Stacker News activity instead of cowboy credits ? Well, it means that now when you setup a receive option, the receiving node will be exposed when a zap is sent to your Stacker News address. This is a bit of a bummer in comparison to the old setup.
With that said, Stacker News is providing an immediate solution for those users that do not want their node ID exposed. Stacker News now has a setting where you can turn on a proxy for any incoming sats to your Stacker News ln address, albeit at a cost of 10% of the receiving amount. I assume this will work to basically give you the same experience as before, with the Stacker News lightning node acting as the proxy before sats are sent to your node.
That's awesome that the option is available, but the price is pretty steep (I'd imagine that the price is set steep because Stacker News does not want to act in this function for its users ; this is a classy move to provide it at all even though Stacker News is not probably intending to be a leading privacy service provider in the lightning space). So, what is a pleb to do ? Well, there is a solution out there available to all plebs that can give you the proxy receiving privacy you want without paying 10% of your received sats for that privacy: Enter Zeuspay (https://docs.zeusln.app/lightning-address/intro/)
So, Zeuspay is an ln address that any LND node runner can use by setting up their node in the Zeus app via the available options. I won't go into detail how to do this (i'm happy to answer questions in the comments, but not really the point of this post to give a step by step tutorial), but essentially once you have set up your connection in Zeus to your LND node, there is an option in the setting to create your own Zeuspay ln address. This ln address is a bit different than custodial options you have experienced:
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When sats are sent to this ln address, they actually need to be redeemed by you within the Zeus app within 24 hours. If not redeemed within 24 hours, they are sent back to the sender's wallet. This is how zeus set up the service so that it works best with their embedded mobile node as such nodes will not be online all the time.
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When you redeem sats, those sats are then actually going first to the Zeus lightning node, and then to your node. Thus, it is a proxy for receiving sats that will not reveal your node to the original sat sender.
So, if a Stacker News user sets up their wallet config in Stacker News to receive sats using the ln address to their Zeuspay ln address, they will now have the privacy benefit of before. AND, what's great is that Zeus just recently dropped the receiving fees to 0 for this service (see the recent nost post here: https://njump.me/nevent1qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgawaehxw309ahx7um5wghxy6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgewaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8xmn0wf6zuum0vd5kzmp0qqsdmf5h6kpzt2pxh0cmgf43uksjhklx07s49n2ydeh82lnqw83p2pqsph5ec). So, as long as you make sure to log into your Zeus app and redeem sats once a day, you can use this option to receive sats to your Stacker News ln address with a privacy proxy that does not utilize Stacker News' proxy service. Now, one caveat I will say which I experienced while testing: if you do not have a channel open with Zeus, it did not work very well for me. However, once I got a channel open with Zeus, and got some inbound liquidity in that channel, it has worked perfectly. Hope that post serves you well fellow Stackers, happy zapping n stacking :)
#bitcoin
#lightning