Oddbean

eCash is useful for many things. First of all, the token is the money. Which means you can send money offline, for example, just by sharing a string or QR code (or tapping phones via NFC / Bluetooth / whatever). FediMint has this feature, and it's very useful in certain situations. It's also very private. You can also use eCash tokens as authentication strings, e.g. to retrieve data from an API or DVM. You can think of it as accessing something and instead of putting a regular password you put an eCash string into the "password" field, so you immediately and directly pay for the request. No account needed. #SovEng people are exploring this as we speak. My 2 sats. cashuAeyJ0b2tlbiI6W3sibWludCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbGVnZW5kLmxuYml0cy5jb20vY2FzaHUvYXBpL3YxL0RqSE1xQk1RR1N3S2Mzb2lSeDMyNHciLCJwcm9vZnMiOlt7ImlkIjoiaGw3NTV5MVY3UU1jIiwiYW1vdW50IjoyLCJzZWNyZXQiOiJaYSs0TVBHUHR6OFlCbzBIeE1HOGYzOTRlVVhkbkQ5NTYydkxTSStTYVJvPSIsIkMiOiIwM2Y4YjQ2ZDAzODM3YjY1NTM2ZTJmYzYwYzg2NGU0NjBmZDJkOWQ5ODExNzc4MTNiNzIxZjhmZmNjMWVlN2U0ZTMifV19XSwibWVtbyI6IlNlbnQgdmlhIGVOdXRzLiJ9

Not in the business of convincing you, just tried to explain what makes it unique and useful. Maybe it was insightful to someone else, which is why I like to have these discussions out in the open in the first place. You never know who is reading and learning!

The basic idea is that we will need a custodial solution because we may not be able to scale lightning to 8 billion people. Using these e-cash “banks” is currently our best approach. The protocol is much more efficient und quicker than lightning. It has the advantage that the custodians (mints) can not identify who is paying, I.e. they can’t censor a single user. In that respect it is more private than custodial lighting. Still, there remains a risk of rugpulls since the underlying lightning bitcoin is held centrally as with any custodial solution.

It's too complicated for the average user . I can hold my BTC privatly on my own. There's already wallets like Alby that are not used by 8 million people. There are people that will not understand this and I can not see it being adopted if BTC is accepted by the average person. I can't see an apple cart vendor using this.

We use it to settle debts between ourselves among my siblings, and a couple trusted friends. I run a mint (separate liquidity from my main personal LN node), I'm not a scammer, and the folks who I've onboarded & use it all know where I live 😉 From my perspective, it's just a deferred settlement pattern, and up to them when they choose to redeem or leave my mint. Privacy doesnt really matter for us, it's the speed and simplicity we like. Some of us still use lightning by itself most of the time, but that's not as easy to onboard without using impersonal 3rd parties, or getting your hands dirty

Great example of a use case. Think of small communities implementing this through businesses and locals. It keeps all currency circulating in the micro economy. As long as buyer and seller are satisfied, this is ideal. Unlike former "barter networks" it's an honest ledger, no ability for insiders to print or inflate. nostr:nevent1qqs893zdpgda2wh0wmf566xwp3gc9pjwfersw8qlk5uet5ga3pusnrcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzpunxy655rzdegks0q9rtzmz03fkw6vdntxzggvlmvvr034hwcdnpqvzqqqqqqydvmjj0

This is really cool. If you've been watching the cashu / ecash stuff from a distance but afraid that it's going to be hard to understand or difficult to use (like me), try this app. Something something deez nuts. Time to travel down another 🐇🕳️ Ty @Agron ⚡️💜 nostr:nevent1qqsp9uewc22zww25cwf0dpc0f7e0suywdakzrc8gem55k7507j0knhqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzqmjxss3dld622uu8q25gywum9qtg4w4cv4064jmg20xsac2aam5nqvzqqqqqqy4yj352

If you send me cashu, you'll receive balance to communicate with DVMs. Today. nostr:nevent1qqsdvryrnksnff3hwk45rzcs95t2ma2ntxaa0lczwywh2nlfqxxu92gpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyphydppzm7m554ecwq4gsgaek2qk32atse2l4t9ks57dpms4mmhfxqcyqqqqqqgx5vfk8

The token is the money: the token is the IOU. The token you attached to your note was an IOU for 2 satoshis but it was not 2 satoshis in the sense of a lightning or on-chain payment. (yes, for 2sat both of those would not make much sense) Send money offline: The sender can be offline and pay invoices to a recipient at the denominations that he is carrying tokens with him. The recipient can offline verify that the token was issued by the mint but cannot know if it was spent already without talking to the mint. Great for async tipping. Not so great for POS situations with one of the parties being offline.

then you go to the mint and exchange the "token" for sats via lightning? But someone can rug pull you if they have the token and exchange it first. right? you need to trust the "sender" that A) he is not sending it to someone else B) not exchanging it for sats before you.. Did I get it right?

Makes sense for npub to be the identity login, but I’m not following as why eCash is superior to Lightning Login Can you elaborate a bit more on that point? Also sad because I just programmed Lightning Login a week ago lol

There is already a working concept in command line wallets to lock the sent token to receiver's pubkey. That way offline send can work without the risk of sender double spend before receiver comes online. Will take some time until it lands in mobile wallets. Naive offline send/receive proof of concept is available in Minibits.

As I think of it, you're right - scheman provides ability for the receiver to be offline. For sender to be offline as well, he would need to prepare the locked token upfront in order to get mint's sig.