A quick LN wallets guide for newbies
I've made another graphical reference of LN wallets for all those new users coming into the Bitcoin space.
BEFORE starting to use Bitcoin over Lightning Network (LN), please think about the use case you have.
This graphical representation could help you choose the right ones for your use case.
https://i.postimg.cc/fRZVc4J8/wallets-3-circles.jpg
In this image, we can see that Zeus is the only one that can be used with all three options and with multiple accounts / connections.
Do not blindly follow the influencers advice to "use X or use Y app". Most of them don't even know well how those apps works or not even know the existence of better ones. They just feed you with the apps they (usually) are paid to promote or they use for themselves.
Choose your wallets based on your own usage and situation you encounter using your BTC.
Some aspects to be taken in consideration:
- There's no such thing as "best wallet" for everything. Remove this bias from your mind. Choose with your own knowledge, not because x and y told you so.
- I would not "recommend" any wallet app in particular, but those that are open source and have a good reputation/history and respect the golden rule of Bitcoin: not your keys, not your bitcoin.
- Use those that are open source and can be downloaded directly from their Github repos. Here is a guide about using de-googled devices with Obtainium
- Stay away from "multicrapto" wallet apps. Are a fucking trap and usually are not open source! Bitcoin Only! Any app that contain anything else that is NOT Bitcoin is a crap wallet app. You have been warned!
- Use not just 1 or 2, but 3 or 5-6, each one will have its own moment to be used and take advantage of their best features for the case you need.
Learn more about each wallet app, to know them better and know in which case you could use the one that have the most appropriate features. I wrote several guides about BTC-LN wallets:
- ⚡ Lightning ⚡ Wallets Comparison Guide
- Getting Started Stacking Sats Noob Journey
- Private ⚡️ Lightning Network Nodes ⚡️
- Getting started with ⚡ Lightning Network ⚡
- More specific guides for LN wallets
- What mobile device should bitcoiners use?
Think like a bank, not just be a bank... - Read the FULL guide here
A. HODL = your "central bank" with most of your stash, your reserve bank, barely moving it, onchain
B. CACHE = your "commercial bank" with medium size amounts, for redistributing to HODL and SPEND, onchain and LN, nodes channels etc
C. SPEND = your spending pockets, with small amounts, enough to cover your regular spending, LN, with funding source from your "CACHE bank".
https://m.stacker.news/36606
The most surprising thing I've learnt about others is how much people love and appreciate uniqueness. When I first started making the rap videos I was a bit worried that people would think it was weird. But reflecting on why being different is good, I think we're all a bit jaded by the tsunami of sameness (e.g. Tiktok trends done again and again by hundreds of people). As sats become more prolific in these platforms (and as more people use Stacker News!) we'll be able to navigate our way through the noise and be able find and encourage more uniqueness in everyone!
The most surprising thing I've learnt about myself is how much I enjoy the process. I'm usually very outcome-oriented, but the pure joy of being in the flow of the process is nothing like I've experienced in any type of work I've done ^_^
I watched a random YouTube video today that claimed the universe is a simulation and the big bang was a fake genesis story.
Hi Alex, thanks for doing this AMA!
Had two questions.
First question is regarding HRF funding and how it allocates to bitcoin developers. What are some of the requirements needed to apply?
Second question, Have you ever thought of letting a camera crew follow you and capture the conversations and places you go to? Have strong inclination this would be a great documentary series.
what if nunchuk goes out of business for whatever reason, then what happens with all your multisig wallet setup in nunchuk? where to take the BSMS files to recovery process? Its not like you can use Blockstream Green to recover using BSMS file? can you address this question so your son can recover funds easily, Hugo: thnks
What is this?
This is a bitcoin wallet designed around the idea of making every spend a coinjoin. I want it to do a coinjoin whenever you send money and I want it to only accept money from wallets who sent the money inside a coinjoin.
How can I try it out?
Click here (testnet only): https://brilliancebitcoin.github.io/void/
Why did you do this?
Mostly to dunk on monero people. Also because I care about people's privacy, especially my own, and current coinjoin wallets are too hard to use, I want something simple and easy, (I know, that's not what this wallet is yet, but I think the foundations are there. Have some patience and go use some other coinjoin wallet while you wait.)
Monero people show up in my twitter feed all the time touting their block explorer where each transaction hides the sender and the recipient. Well I figure if I make a wallet that only uses coinjoins, we can dunk back on them by showing them that bitcoin has the same thing. Use void wallet and all your transactions will hide the sender and the recipient, just like in monero.
Also, I'm not satisfied with the way coinjoins are done in bitcoin and I want to improve them. My chief criticisms are: the coordinators in samourai and wasabi can be targeted by law enforcement, which may scare people away from running the coordination software, and samourai and wasabi also prioritize or require rounded coinjoin amounts like 1 million sats, 100,000 sats, or 10 million sats, which makes it hard to use coinjoins for everyday payments. For those of you pointing out that joinmarket never had these problems, I know, I love joinmarket, but I don't think any current version of it works well on mobile, so it doesn't escape my criticism either.
Oh, I thought you did this because you don't like the fee structure in other coinjoin implementations
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Samourai, wasabi, and joinmarket all make regular users pay someone to do a coinjoin, and samourai and wasabi also make you pay the coordinator when you want to add funds to the coinjoin pool. That all seems like maybe it's overkill. Ok it's probably not, there are good reasons for doing that, let me rephrase.
In samourai and wasabi, there is a semi-constant trickle of coinjoins every block or two, and people pay money to park their coins in that trickle and just basically coinjoin all the time. The same people, if they used joinmarket, would get paid to do that. And both of those models are popular with users. Isn't that a bit weird? Why are people happy to pay to constantly coinjoin when they can get paid to constantly coinjoin? I'm not sure, but it has a consequence that if I make that part free, I can use a "save more money" pitch in both directions:
If you want to park your coins somewhere where they will constantly coinjoin, void wallet gives you that for free, unlike samourai and wasabi. And if you just want to click "send" and know a coinjoin happened, void wallet is cheaper than any of the others, because in void wallet you just pay a mining fee, you don't have to pay a coordinator's fee or a market maker's fee.
Who is the coordinator in void wallet?
Your wallet acts as the coordinator whenever you hit the Send button. It creates a psbt, goes out to find other people who use this wallet, and invites them to be in the coinjoin. Then you pass your psbt back and forth with your invited coinjoiners until everyone has contributed some coins and cosigned the transaction. Then you broadcast the signed transaction. Since your wallet is the coordinator for your transactions, you don't have to pay anyone to do the coordination for you, and law enforcers have no central intermediary to target for enforcement. They'll never know who is coordinating what!
Where can I find more info?
https://github.com/brilliancebitcoin/void/
To be honest I was expecting a write-up and a code repository with an integration guide, but will listen to this one.
Run Sparrow as your wallet software and connect it to your node. It will use your node to detect and broadcast your tx.
Lightning :)
For anyone reading, I would like to say all of these methods are flawed for various reasons. Please, read on regular, simple best practices instead of doing funky approaches.