Boltz AMA ⚛️🔁 \ stacker news ~AMA

pull down to refresh

3864 sats \ 10k boost \ 119 comments \ @boltz 2 Apr AMA

This Kilian from Boltz, I'm the typing intern for this AMA but got my two Co-Founders Michael & Karl with me. So go ahead and ask us anything!

view all related items

79 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 2 Apr

What was the hardest part of building Boltz and is it still the same thing?

402 sats \ 1 reply \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Operations at scale.

Things change drastically with scale, but the underlying problems are kinda the same.

It's still the hardest thing we do every day: making sure our service is stable, managing our liquidity, debugging Lightning issues, handling support. It's tough but we love it at the same time 🧡

141 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

It's A LOT harder than it looks.

72 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 2 Apr

Do you have an opinion on liquidity ads?

185 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

It is certainly great for bootstrapping a new node, but in our case we never used liquidity ads as, probably due to the service we are offering via our Lightning nodes, we got enough channels being opened to us.

178 sats \ 10 replies \ @The_Daniel 2 Apr

Hi Kilian! Thanks for hosting this AMA.

My first question is about centralization. Now that a lot of new products have been released that rely on Boltz for their basic functionality, it raises concerns of there being a single point of failure should these swap services become temporarily or permanently unavailable, or outright banned in certain jurisdictions. What's being done to decrease that type of risk?

161 sats \ 3 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Good question! But we believe we have a good answer for that: Boltz's code is open source, including the backend. By now there is not only us, but also some other services running our backend. If we go offline, service quality degrades, you don't like our fees or anything else, just switch the domain and use another service. More details available here: https://x.com/kilrau/status/1860325861880172934

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SwapMarket 2 Apr

Thanks, Killian, as always! We wish Aqua, Bull etc would allow provider's choice in the settings...

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Of course! Talk to them!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 2 Apr bot

https://xcancel.com/kilrau/status/1860325861880172934

28 sats \ 5 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

just use https://swapmarket.github.io/ FUCK JURISDICTIONS! Why people nowadays are so fucking pussies and obey the fictional "laws" ?

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Swapmarkets is great!

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

That's why Boltz sucks! Because Boltz follow the "regulated" thing...

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Jon_Hodl 2 Apr

It looks like they use Boltz for some of their swaps.

44 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Swapmarket is a fork of our web app that let's you switch swap providers, so you have more choices, not only the official Boltz backend:

reply on another page

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dingding541 2 Apr

Would you use middleway, eldamar or actually boltz in swapmarket github Darth?

93 sats \ 1 reply \ @benwehrman 2 Apr

I don't have any burning questions - just want to say thank you for having an awesome service that does exactly what it's supposed to do! Appreciate y'all, and keep up the great work!

81 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

🧡

10.1k sats \ 23 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

When you will dump Tether and Liquid crap ? Boltz should be only LN <--> onchain. ALL THE REST IS TOTAL CRAP AND MISLEADING NOOBS ! Listing Tether and Liquid is literally supporting shitcoins!

110 sats \ 22 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

We don't offer swaps involving Tether and with regards to Liquid's L-BTC, well it simply enables use cases that are not possible with onchain Bitcoin. But we see your point that Liquid doesn't have the same properties as Lightning as it's not featuring unilateral exit.

We can certainly explore ways to help users understand trade-offs better, similar to how https://www.bitcoinlayers.org does.

Also, the new layers we are working on do feature unilateral exit and we are very excited about the use cases one can build with it. Namely with Ark.

0 sats \ 20 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

Namely with Ark.

Ark without LN is totally horseshit. It have no use case without LN. Please explain.

123 sats \ 2 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Well you came to the right place. We are working on doing exactly that - combining Ark with LN 🔥

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

In other words... FUCK BOLTZ.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

That is for clueless normies that eat all the shit they see...

36 sats \ 12 replies \ @ek 2 Apr

Please explain.

0 sats \ 11 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

Ark without LN is FUCKED. Stop living in a dream... So "selling"· Ark as alternative to LN is really dumb and misleading

21 sats \ 10 replies \ @ek 2 Apr

You didn't even get the meme

view all 10 replies

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwapMarket 16h

Why would Ark be without LN? Ark server becomes your LN custodial wallet and will pay your invoices. The only difference from Cashus is that you can unilateraly exit to onchain.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @LibertasBR 2 Apr

What is Ark? I'm a newbie and try to avoid anything bad about BTC, but I like to check, learn about it, before avoiding it.

19 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

Ark is not a "bad" thing for BTC. But also doesn't fix things or scale more. IMHO we already have tools that are not 100% used... but people like to divert noobs attention to things that are incentives for their own business model.

Always keep in mind this:

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 2 Apr

I understand. In a way, I have been skeptical about proposals from companies that don't seem focused on the core of bitcoin. Thanks for responding.

reply on another page

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

Boltz will implement the shitcoin Tether... @remindme in 1 year

20 sats \ 4 replies \ @anon 2 Apr

You're doing a great job guys, I love your service. What are your plans/thoughts on other chains, Lightning Assets (USDT?)? Other topic is a decentralized liquidity/intents market, what do think about it, could Boltz possibly move in this direction?

165 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

We are watching the development of Taproot Assets closely, but do not plan to offer direct Bitcoin / USDT swaps. You can read more about our technical concerns here: https://blog.breez.technology/usdt-on-lightning-the-good-the-bad-and-the-unknown-aefc3aaf6999

Doesn't mean that we can't offer a user-friendly way to swap between Lightning and USDT. Can't disclose details today, but we might be cooking something in that regard 😏

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

Lightning Assets (USDT?)

FUCKING FIAT MAXI! FUCK YOU!

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 2 Apr

Are you drunk dude?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

I am on B-Komplex. Always. And B-Komlpex is always telling the truth.

65 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

What's something you believe about swaps that almost no one agrees with you on?

99 sats \ 3 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

That they should be atomic!

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @SwapMarket 2 Apr

Wait, are they not?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Meant that most other swap platforms out there call it "swap" even though swaps are not atomic (and thus custodial).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwapMarket 2 Apr

true!

21 sats \ 5 replies \ @The_Daniel 2 Apr

What are you doing to address the speed of swaps? In real-world testing I've seen a Lightning <> Liquid swap take around 30 seconds, in some cases longer. This is a major friction point for retail. Tap-to-pay customers and merchants are expecting a near-instant payment confirmation, and when they have to sit there awkwardly waiting for a payment to be accepted, it can cause anxiety and disillusionment.

80 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

100%. We feel the same as we use Boltz-powered wallets ourselves as daily drivers. We recently did some investigation with Bull Bitcoin and turns out much of the delay is on client side. So we are working with implementations to get these down. There is no technical reason why a Boltz Liquid swap for a merchant payment shouldn't complete end to end in sth like 5 seconds end to end.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 2 Apr

How do you use this as a merchant?

Can I accept LN payments on a website and have Boltz seamlessly convert it to an on-chain payment?

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Absolutely, we got a BTCPay plugin that does exactly that. Read more about it here: https://blog.boltz.exchange/p/launching-the-boltz-btcpay-plugin (ignore the "Beta", it's a stable product by now).

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 21h

Excellent news.

Thanks for sharing. I think this solves an issue I have had with receiving payments via BTC pay server for a LONG time.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

I've seen a Lightning <> Liquid swap take around 30 seconds,

You are a total loser if you are fooled to use Liquid crap.

13 sats \ 11 replies \ @Butterfinger 2 Apr

Is it true that boltz blacklists some onchain addresses?

10 sats \ 10 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Tl;dr: yes. The goal is to not "break compatibility" with regulated entities like major exchanges which our users deposit to. More: #926959

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @shadowybadger 2 Apr

Appreciate the transparency.

Do you think it's possible to run a real world company (like one with a legal entity, runs payroll etc) without eventually needing to bend the knee in this way?

Perhaps we have just not worked hard enough on innovative models that lets you both run a company and also not censor transactions. Not sure if that's possible though.

31 sats \ 4 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

We run a real world company with a legal entity.

This was a very pragmatic business decision. We were swamped with support tickets users reporting "Exchange A/B/C froze my account because I used onchain Bitcoin from a Boltz swap". We had to act to not make Boltz incompatible with regulated services.

Also: Boltz is not a privacy tool. Boltz is a tool to (atomically) swap between different Bitcoin layers. We respect users privacy by not requiring more data than strictly necessary to execute the swap, but Boltz is not to be confused with technologies that are meant to enhance your privacy, like coinjoins.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @shadowybadger 2 Apr

Makes sense. Do you have a warrant canary or can you make a statement about log retention policy / periods?

Very good point @ not enhancing privacy.

131 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

https://canary.boltz.exchange, also check https://boltz.exchange/privacy. "Assume we keep all data we have forever" - you can't and shouldn't trust us if we said otherwise.

reply on another page

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 22h

Do you think you'll ever blacklist conjoined UTXO's?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @shadowybadger 19h

They will comply with whatever is required from a regulatory perspective in the jurisdictions they operate in. So I think the question is whether coinjoins could ever become illegal

reply on another page

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Butterfinger 2 Apr

that's castration not transparency.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Use another swap provider running Boltz backend that handles things differently via https://swapmarket.github.io

Or even better: launch your own swap service! All our code is Open Source: https://github.com/BoltzExchange.

Complaining doesn't change things, go and launch something! 🙌

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

regulated entities l

FUCKING SLAVES OBEYING RULES

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Butterfinger 2 Apr

then fuck boltz it's a fiat service like any other.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Car 20h

Curious to understand how Boltz makes money? Is it just through fees or are there other areas to generate capital behind the scenes? And if so how profitable or close to break even are y’all?

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @boltz OP 13h

Curious to understand how Boltz makes money?

We take a cut for each swap. Our Web App exposes this as "Boltz Fee" which ranges from 0.1% to 0.5% depending on layer and direction.

Is it just through fees or are there other areas to generate capital behind the scenes?

Just the fees.

And if so how profitable or close to break even are y’all?

We are profitable. And no VC capital/external investors involved.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 7h

Wow congrats guys.👏👏👏

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 20h

I've seen you mention in another comment that Boltz isn't a privacy tool. However, for people swapping out to on-chain via lightning, what sort of exposure do they face? Seems like a pretty good way to lose the on-chain association with the UTXO you eventually end up with.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 13h

Seems like a pretty good way to lose the on-chain association with the UTXO you eventually end up with.

For the public observer, yes. But always consider that we, Boltz, do have the association.

However, for people swapping out to on-chain via lightning, what sort of exposure do they face?

The exposure is that we might be forced by law enforcement to reveal the association between two payments of a swap. This didn't happen so far and we expect El Salvador authorities to only require this for serious crime, but it might in future and we'll have to comply, see https://boltz.exchange/privacy.

That all being said, sending Lightning to Boltz provides very decent privacy and we don't have a way to tell where a payment came from. That's the sender privacy part. With Bolt12 and blinded paths receiver privacy on LIghtning is getting a massive boost too and we are working together with the team at Breez to ship something very soon that makes Boltz fully Bolt12 compatible. Here the main PR that was merged just 3 days ago: https://github.com/BoltzExchange/boltz-backend/pull/859

Tl;dr: using Lightning is a very good idea as it doesn't reveal origin and with Bolt12 blinded paths neither destination to us and thus there is nothing much to reveal in the first place ✌️

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @openyoureyes 22h

Halve the fees on sundays when mempool is empty?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 14h

But but... we do that already! Network fees, which are charged separately from our Boltz fee, automatically adjust based on the mempool situation. Dirt cheap right now!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 23h

Does Electrum use Boltz for their atomic swaps?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 14h

Nope, they are rolling their own implementation.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 2 Apr

Yo, what do you think differentiates you from your competitors? What excites you most about the next year?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @boltz OP 14h

what do you think differentiates you from your competitors?

Pragmatism. We focus on shipping features that are real-world useful for Bitcoiners.

What excites you most about the next year?

The sheer endless possibility of new use cases we can build with new Bitcoin Layers launching.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 5h

Great Stuff, forward!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @TNStacker 2 Apr

Typing intern? That a thing?

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Made it up, now it's a thing ;)

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @odium 2 Apr

How do you feel about that?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Great meme, but luckily we are not alone. There are more entities running Boltz backends by now (see e.g. https://swapmarket.github.io/) and then there is Acinq/Phoenix, Zeus and many more all build very solid payment infrastructure.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ContraMundum5 2 Apr

What’s your take on Nostr and integrating Boltz with it in some way?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

We will significantly lower liquid swap amounts soon to enable Nostr zaps with it, but apart from that no concrete plans of an integration. But open for ideas!

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 2 Apr

I love boltz!! It’s always worked every time I used it. So thankful for you and the team.

So what is on the development roadmap? Are you guys profitable? Any chance you do a collaboration with Zeus wallet?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

We are working on an Ark integration, which is probably the most significant thing we'll launch this year. Yes, we are profitable and we actually worked with Evan and the team to get sth up for them, but leaving it to them to announce ✌️

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 2 Apr

Are there any future plans for Boltz Pro?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

More automation options, improve the manual option via https://pro.boltz.exchange. And also make pro swaps useful with e.g. https://github.com/BoltzExchange/boltz-backend/issues/197

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 2 Apr

What are the Bitcoin books you'd recommend?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Start with "21 Lessons: What I've Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole" for a shorter intro and with "The Bitcoin Standard" for rethinking "money". Another great choice (albeit not a Bitcoin book) is "The Sovereign Individual".

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @aftermath 2 Apr

What are the biggest challenges you have faced while maintaining your Lightning nodes?
What characteristics do you look for when selecting nodes to open new channels? Do you open channels at all or do you balance liquidity via swaps?
Your nodes were accessible through the Tor network in the past, but not anymore, what has led you to change this?

31 sats \ 2 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Wheeeere do we start... LND's bbolt database is a massive problem for large nodes like ours. Migration to postrgres was promised many years back and yet here we are still running on bbolt and regularly rebooting our node for database compaction. CLN's pay was absolutely borked until the debut of xpay just some months ago. Michael had to write our own pay plugin (called mpay obviously) to be even able to use our node for payments And we worked with Rusty and the team quite a bit to improve xpay. As of v25.02. it's usable.
We almost never open channels, our gravity seems to be large enough so far that even large players like Binance open to us.
As of recently, correct. We love Tor and continue serving our web app and API via Tor but Tor with Lightning is just not a great match. We witnessed so many payments getting stuck at a tor node on the route that, as harsh as it sounds, running a Lightning node on Tor is not doing anyone favors because of the unreliability of the Tor network.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @eltordev 22h

As of recently, correct. We love Tor and continue serving our web app and API via Tor but Tor with Lightning is just not a great match. We witnessed so many payments getting stuck at a tor node on the route that, as harsh as it sounds, running a Lightning node on Tor is not doing anyone favors because of the unreliability of the Tor network.

For now 😈 Keep an eye peeled on what is brewing in the kitchen https://github.com/el-tor

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 13h

Aweseome - starred!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

You will never get a clear response to that Q because otherwise everybody will start a swap service. It's all about liquidity economics. Nobody will give you the "secret" recipe.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @030e0dca83 2 Apr

What a steak doneness do you prefer?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

anything over 60C is disrespecting the steak

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Coinsreporter 2 Apr

How do you envision the Bitcoin and lightning landscape for India? What needs to be done to get better adoption in the subcontinent?

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Local acceptance, local community-driven lightning wallets. True circular economies that showcase what's possible just like Bitcoin Jungle in Costa Rica or Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador (both launching their own wallets btw)!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 2 Apr

This is short and sweet answer. Sooo thanks. 🙏🙏

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

India is full of shitcoiners (like you)

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @jakoyoh629 2 Apr

Long live the King!

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

lol

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

what king? king of nothing?

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @jakoyoh629 2 Apr

swap king! Ahah

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

no. Boltz is not the "swap king" as many think. Is just an illusion. Is the swap for losers.ç There are other ways to swap LN<-->onchain.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @jakoyoh629 2 Apr

Who's the king of those swaps?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

no king

view all 1 replies

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

Who is the smartest person you've ever met?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

Tough one. We are still discussing about it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

why are you asking this useless question to all AMAs? "smartest" person IRL is really dumb.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 2 Apr

What's the most surprising thing you've learned building boltz?

110 sats \ 0 replies \ @boltz OP 2 Apr

People tend to not open their wallet when receiving a payment lol

When I expect to receive money in a particular moment, why wouldn't you look at the receiving wallet? But this was an issue haunting us, we actually had a canned response "Please open Phoenix" at some point. Now this is luckily largely fixed with mobile notifications.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 2 Apr

again same question for all AMAs? pathetic