It is useful for new no coin users to be able to send and receive zaps without having to use any perosnal information or pay.

It fills the 0-100k sat gap that users face if nostr native to bitcoin. They need a custodian until they can open a 100k sat self cutodial channel. 

 Yeah, custodian is the point where I'm out. I do not send anyone to any custodial solutions. If it doesn't work without custodial then we much more work is needed. 

 I'm still figuring it out myself but from what I understood the differences were that the Zeus Lightning address has a time limitation if the user is offline for more than 24-hours then the payment is returned to the sender. Where as the Minibits Lightning address doesn't. Also, the Minibits wallet can handle ecash along with sats seamlessly, which might be a plus if the user is into ecash. What I'm not so sure about is what happens if the mint operator's server goes down; the ecash is stored on the user's device and any user can run a mint themselves to connect with their client so I think it's easy enough to recover in the event a mint operator gets taken down. I went through the recovery process for good measure by funding the mint, uninstalling/reinstalling the app, and I am in fact in control of my keys/sats so I don't think it's custodial. I suppose a better test would be to restore in a different app altogether. 

 cashu ecash is a custodial iou for sats on the ln node of the mint but the tokens are bearer assets on the device 

it offers superior privacy over any other custodial LN solution

the "ecash" will typically be denominated as sats but can also be in usd

the mint can't rug an individual but could rug the whole mint 

if users are on the same mint tokens can be sent out of band by dm, text, email for free

Minibits pays any ln invoice as well

there are certainly ways to zap self custodially but minibits has amazing product fit for nostr 

send out your balance to redeem sats into self custodial ln channel on Zeus for example

 

 Ah, thanks, that was my confusion; I thought the ecash was the token being stored on the device. Didn't realize ecash was an IOU held by the mint operator. The way it's presented on the website is: "Ecash is a digital barer token that is stored on a user's device, very similar to physical cash."

https://docs.cashu.space/# 

 Yes token is on device but is only redeemable for actual lightning sats by the mint that issued it 

 If Alice has tokens issued from Minibits and sends them to Bob who uses enuts, can he redeem the tokens from Alice? He would be trying to cash in tokens that enuts did not issue. 

 Yes because Alice's ecash token would be redeemed for sats that would be paid over lightning network from minibits ln node to enuts ln node which would then issue Bob ecash tokens that are kept on his device 

 If Alice and Bob share the same mint then they can send ecash to eachother without a lightning transaction and with near perfect privacy  

 iiuc, Alice & Bob can send the bearer tokens amongst eachother intra mint with no Lightning tx but to send inter mint; the token has to be redeemed by the Alice's mint, sats sent via Lightning tx to Bob's mint, and there new bearer tokens are issued to Bob.