Oddbean new post about login | logout Just installed #alby hub alongside my home node. https://guides.getalby.com/user-guide/alby-account-and-browser-extension/alby-hub/alby-hub-flavors/desktop Interesting experience; I did not opt for the purist route of own LN and BTC node (not sure how purist that actually is, in the end) but the more 'default' option of LDK talking to esplora (as I understood). Very interesting how different the modern onboarding experience is. Of course even this is a bit too much responsibility for most users most of the time (an always on PC!). Cloud hosting makes sense, but I think the fee will put people off, a bit (no judgment). All of this is super lax privacy wise to be clear. Even more so than my every day expenses LN wallet, Phoenix. As a result I've finally reenabled zaps for myself after more than a year's hiatus 😄
Zap to get you started. What improvements do you think can be made? I think routing happens locally and channels are private by default, but everything is on clearnet. What else?
Thanks. Not sure it's easy to improve, but esplora lookups aren't as good as monitoring with home node, right? Kinda intrinsic to not having a home node. Just a first thought. Also this model used by phoenix and alby of single channel connection to LN obv has huge advantages but has a privacy tradeoff right.
Tradeoff, but with Alby the routing is done on the client side so if you self-host they can’t trivially see where the payment is going. They can do timing correlation with other information but that’s a much more involved attack. Sadly, today, Phoenix does routing on the server side so they see the payment destination in the clear. As for esplora, yea, it’s not ideal, but if you’re using a fixed LSP it doesn’t matter - the LSP knows all your on-chain info anyway, and ideally your payments are lightning so the on-chain information isn’t “the interesting part” (aside from any on-chain setup deposits).
You can open more than 1 channel and, as you point out, you probably should. Choosing a different LSP is a bit more "advanced", but the option is there. Great point on the esplora lookup.
I setup a stand alone lnd node once and it was fun watching transactions route but ultimately I’d go for days and weeks without routing anything so I ended up shutting down. It would be cool if there was a Nostr “tag” we could add to self hosted nodes to guide who to open channels with, building a sub network. The volume of inbound and outbound zaps would have a higher chance of being balanced across “Nostr nodes” improving the ability to make zaps self custodial?
I've set it up alongside phoenixd in docker on a raspberry pi. Imported the phoenix seed from my mobile wallet so zapping from phoenix, channel was already there