Oddbean new post about login | logout I don't mind IOU/custodial payments under a couple bucks. Any more, and I want the real thing, not an IOU.
The beauty of eCash is that you can choose the level of custodianship quite easily. Use your personal mint, your families mint, your appartment complex mint, your towns mint… depending on the level of trust and convenience. Very similar to Lightning custodians, but better.
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ecash > Ecash > eCash See, the 90s are over!
Ser, not see! Hahahah
So a mint and a channel are the same or very similar
No. Look at a mint more like a pocket of sats inside a LN server/channel. They can move around in the pocket infinitely without changing channel inbound/outbound liquidity, and they can get cashed out via the channel when needed. Current Lightning custodians also have multiple users in a server/channel, but sometimes fees are still there even if low, and there are privacy implications.
It seems with nodes and channels one needs specific hardware and software. With mints, electricity and internet connection is all one needs. Make sense?
A mint still needs standard LN server with channels etc
Which mint is npub.cash based on, which URL? Is there a possibility in the future to link it in NWC to compatible clients in order to zap directly to Nostr as well as receive them?
yes. currently it is connected to minibits.cash. We are working on enabling to pick from any available mints.
You probably prefer and trade practicality over 'the real thing' way more often than you realize. All kinds of providers, be it energy, streaming, mobile or other(/payment) providers, get paid upfront and then owe you their services for the coming month or whatever period. All reputation or legal costs, revenue and countless other metrics and costs stacked together are why you dont have to doubt you get what you owe or routinely worry about rugging. For lots of applications of ecash this balance of costs is not skewed in favor of the ecash-issuer, so intentionally giving no service or rugpulling is then not likely nor smart. IMO Wherever you are locked in with a provider, ecash is a viable option which could give extra flexibility for user AND provider.
The way I see it, I think it might just play out like this: Lightning as an L3 for LSP infra and some self-hosters. Fedimint ecash for custody services. Cashu ecash for self-hosters and potentially with their own smaller communities. Inherently, while one might ask why use ecash versus standard sats, truth is, ecash has some advantages: - More private - Actually zero fees - Offline (PoC) usage As a self-custody maximalist, I too wondered about what ecash could bring to the table but the reality is, given the benefits, if you self-custody in standard LN already, you might as well run a mint too. If you dont't self-custody, you still have the above benefits and with federated mints there are less chances for rugpulls. I believe cashu also have plans on addressing the potential for rugpulls from angles that standard LN is unable to offer due to inherent limitations.