Any good that the Mutiny team did for self custodial lightning is overshadowed by this move to shut down their service so soon after launching. Has it even been a year? How many companies can expect to be successful after such a short time? How much of the funds they received from grants and other donations did they pocket? What are they not discolosing about their reasoning for shutting down. Fuck that and fuck them unless they’re more forthright with everyone about what’s going on.


I've heard a few different perspectives on Mutiny.  Does anyone have any insight on why exactly they're closing shop?


not sure its insight, but stacker news convo here

https://stacker.news/items/636091/r/itsMoro


Agreed. Crappy wallet anyway


I only know what they officially posted in their announcement and blog. It sounds like complete bullshit.


rolling out the fedi product with ln address support at a premium then shutting down a few months after...eek.


It honestly reads like they need to grow up. Being disillusioned with the industry you work in is par for the course for most adults.
If you don’t want to work on Mutiny, that’s your prerogative; just say so. You don’t get the right to shift blame onto what you see as a shift in ideals of a community you only pose to represent.


Did you read the blog? https://blog.mutinywallet.com/mutiny-wallet-is-shutting-down/


Just saw the comment saying you did 😅


Agreed. I remember a post by Jack noting its debut. It seems *they were shilling it on #nostr a few weeks after I joined May 1, ‘23.

*Don’t recall if it was enthusiasm or merely informational from nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m but, I was impressed that he thought them worthy of a note. This is very disappointing news, that they’re presumably rugging their early supporters


This line seems important, but I dont know why: ""For one, I've fallen out of love for Bitcoin and the industry.""


Projects and companies fail. That’s nothing new. But at least have the integrity to be open about the actual reasons why. Their messaging so far sounds to me like total bullshit.


That stood out to me too. Very strange. I get it that people change and projects often fail. If this was all done on their own dime then it would still suck, but life happens. But what accountability is there, or should there be, when donations and grant funds are involved, especially within such a short time frame? Do they pay it back? Do they keep it? Did they already spend it and can’t sustain themselves any further? The blog post and announcement sound like corporate BS and leaves a lot of questions unanswered.


What have you done for them that you think you are entitled to anything more than what they've disclosed in their article?

Did you donate?


The grant money did come to mind when I read the note. I have no idea how grants work in the case where the company shuts down after a short period of time. Do they have to give back a portion? Do they have to disclose how much they spent? Again, no idea how it works but I was curious.


I had the same thoughts. I just switched over to Mutiny because I liked their general philosophy and direction. I'm left wondering what the point was.

It's cool that they want to explore other products, but I won't bother with any of them (assuming they're relevant for me) out of fear that I'm just going to be rugged again.

It's so bizarre and unexpected. I also don't understand why the entire project had to die because one person is burned out.

I'm glad I didn't convert anyone over yet. Shit like this makes onboarding people really painful and risky for me.

The team should have been more transparent and made it clear that the project was a toy. I understand that people sometimes need to leave a project, but stuff like this impacts those who provide support financially and by helping others with adoption.

nostr:note19xsf4z3gp4sdqmegndytqe8f0vasnwx2ze64avhmr97u4yjnzeequ0xdx2


“Don’t ask questions. Nothing to see here.” Lol listen to yourself.


Most grants I've seen are paid in stages exactly for this reason. Quarterly, monthly, etc. I doubt there are any strings attached if that's the case here. It's likely not worth pursuing regardless, other than maybe to take ownership of the project and branding to appoint new people. I'd like to see that here. They shouldn't be able to take and have the sole choice in closing the project entirely. The grant holder should be able to take the project over if they choose to.


Zap! 🫡


No idea. I’m sure it’s between them and the grand foundation. They also had raised at least $300k in investor funding, and again that’s between them and their investors. I assume that’s why they left the business “operational” even though they’re killing off the only products they actually offer. Lol. It smells shady, and it hurts trust in other open source efforts and in the OpenSats vetting process.


I don't think there's anything sus going on. It's just basically impossible to run a self custody node on your phone that runs mint, doesn't rug users with lightning glitches and requires minimal support. 3 dudes salary + some marketing and infrastructure spend, very easy to burn 500k or whatever they got. So I'm guessing they just saw writing was on the wall.

Total speculation on my part of course I don't have any inside information


Saw a post yesterday talking about tether adjacent companies losing funding, was mutiny tether adjacent? I thought they were funded by ten31?


Ah good to know about the stages. So you’re saying that Opensats can take over the project or you would want them to be able to take it over?


Vetting process must be difficult. Seems impossible to know a project’s intensions a year in advance


Your input is especially valuable. Maybe that’s it, but the announcement didn’t feel right being so out of the blue and focusing on personal reasons (Ben got a job, Tony fell out of love with Bitcoin). Lol. I’ve learned to listen to my gut on stuff when something feels off. Doesn’t mean I’m right every time though, but I’m often at least partially right once more info comes out.


Chill... just trust. Don't verify.
🤣


I've seen this before with startups - devs quickly get thrust into the business side (including fundraising as discussed in the blog post) and they're often ill prepared to succeed in that realm...

Most startups then seek experienced leadership (CEO / CFO) to take over those tasks and get the company to the next level (and the devs are happy to just get back to what they love - coding).

In some cases, Devs don't want to give up "their baby" and try to do everything--and in most of those cases, the company then fails.

I suspect this is what happened to Mutiny...devs just wanted to get back to coding (i.e. "new projects) and weren't happy doing the business tasks necessary to make the company succeed (and were too proud to hand those tasks off to someone else).


Im wondering about running a community version.


No idea about Tether. Mutiny is listed on Ten31’s website though.


Good feedback. 💜


I don’t suppose nostr:npub1mutnyacc9uc4t5mmxvpprwsauj5p2qxq95v4a9j0jxl8wnkfvuyque23vg is offering refunds to anyone who bought a Mutiny+ subscription to use the fedimint feature that stopped working a within a few weeks, are they?


Probably not. Probably no refunds for the 3 times I paid 10k to open a channel that got forced close a couple days later. That app was doomed to fail from the start.


At the very least they ought to do that.


They don't owe you shit


OpenSats grants are paid monthly, at least from the few grant receivers that I've spoken with.

Their $300K seed round was in April 2023. Their undisclosed amount from OpenSats was in July 2023.

Both of these were over a year ago. It's possible the funding dried up paying the salaries and infrastructure costs for a 18 months.

It's tough out there, man.


I get what they are doing is difficult, and we are early adopters in this and it’s part of the risk, but i was put off by their “just deal with it” attitudes.


I thought they said a total of 800k in funding for 18 months


It’s a rough time to be in tech. Pre-seed on up. It will settle. Eventually.


I'm saying it would be fair if that were the case. I don't think it's fair for investors, grant donors, etc to just be shafted and left with nothing unexpectedly. But that's on those parties for not having an agreement if they don't have one.


Even though Mutiny is self custodial, it requires that your channels be with their node for liquidity right? I don’t see an option to open a channel to another node. If that’s the case, any community version would need to have a dedicated node for liquidity.


Got it.  But we have node runners in the community, no?


Dude, calm down. I can ask any questions I want. Lol


I also know nothing about their financials. I just  meant in general from what I've seen with grants


i see that mentioned but don't see a public announcement on that funding.


Some thoughts as a mutiny angel investor. Open source wallets are hard. They’re even harder to monetize. The samourai/wasabi shit made that monetization even harder. Having seen some of the financials, I feel confident stating the team isn’t/wasn’t “pocketing money”. They are a small scrappy startup team working with limited resources. I believe they are doing their best / did their best with the wallet. I don’t believe anything nefarious is going on. Startups are just fucking hard.


yeah, i'm seeing problems in my own work too, getting a definite muted feels from my boss, first time since i started waiting so long after beginning of month for my pay to go through also

economy is tanking hard, so that means probably a huge money print is upcoming and then later on raging inflation and more hitting the brakes and further the whole thing slides out of contrtol

with the real shink going on the NGU in bitcoin is not gonna be as good or mean as much when there is less it can be used for, but on the other hand, the rush to cash is gonna mean a lot more bitcoin so ... i'm on a bitcoin standard anyway, i pray for a good ngu so i can get some stuff organised


For a team and project of that size, $1.8M for an 18-month runway is more realistic.


“Consumer-facing applications in a very technically challenging environment with a very small team and resources are not for us. Our focus is on building services and tools for our needs and others.”

they tried. It didn’t work out.


Hang in there. Sounds a lot like my 2007, I was going through that a year before the economy dumped. Clients had trouble making payments back then, work slowed down.

I’m a freelancer, tech is my primary income and tech winter has been long. It’s getting better but I diversified my ass off and stepped out of the tech bubble a bit. Shut down my brick and mortar. Just doing things differently than 2007. A much more positive experience today, for me, but the signs are there. The volatility, for sure.


Like that’s 44k a month man how many people were working there?


Correction, it seems you can open channels to other nodes. So that makes it more usable. Still would need to be maintained and updated. And I’m not sure what features may or may not be unavailable without their LSP.


Oh


So does this mean the app will be removed from the AppStore ?  Can the app still function without them ?


Success isn’t guaranteed, and I know lots of projects and companies fail. I applaud them for trying, but the way they announced this leaves a lot of questions, more than it answers in my opinion.


We've stopped accepting new Mutiny+ about 2 months ago.


“We’re still early” also means we’re still learning and will fuck up things until we’ve figured them out.

I celebrate everyone who’s helping us to fail upwards.


Agreed. We need more cypherpunks in the arena trying things. Even if those things don’t work out or aren’t perfect.


i've met tony and ben a few times. they're good people that are incredibly smart and talented. maybe im blinded by considering them friends and also because i never fully dove into using mutiny on a daily basis. does this suck? absolutely. it hurts. and im sure users are upset too.


yeah, i think the coming 12 months are gonna be very rough

but for those of us who know the score it's gonna be relatively smooth because we are not in the way of the oncoming train, that will help because people will notice we aren't sinking like the mainstream


Idk why people just don't use Blixt

Only thing I give major props to for Mutiny was PWA, that was a great feature we need to see more of


We have something we didn’t have in 2008 😉

That was a rough one for me. I worked for a giant corporation that furloughed us. We made half for months on end. It was brutal.

More prepared this go around.


Thank you for investing in this team and accepting the risk! 🙏


i wish i was more more prepared... for me at that time i was insulated from the real world in the UBI bubble of australian long term unemployment just before the point at which i started to realise it was never going to change while i lived there... 4 years later i left the country for good, was no scope for me to really become economically mobile

has only taken 12 years to reach the point now where i will likely weather this next storm where before i would have probably sunk into suicidal depression

just mainly hoping to establish something of a tenure as a bitcoin/nostr dev so i can tread water until the economy fully corrects from the current insanity

i'm not so optimistic that i've feathered my nest adequately at this point, i think i should have reconsidered my relocation options sooner when it was easier for me to do it


startups are way fucking harder than most people realize


I'd like to know what you meant regarding falling out of love with bitcoin. Is it just the burn out or do you think it's unworkable as a MoE?


I’ve read it through twice now. Why was there no mention prior to this that drastic changes were being considered if you’ve been considering this for months? Why is the wallet still available for new users on your website? What happens to existing Mutiny+ subscribers? Are they given refunds? Why should anyone use any new “dream wallet” that Mutiny creates after this? What does this say to people donating or considering donating to other wallet devs? You’re dealing with people’s money and their use of their money in an industry where reputation is everything, and right now Mutiny has lost its reputation in my mind. Take that for what it’s worth, which maybe is nothing. I’m just a dude on the internet. I wish you and the Mutiny team success, but this is a huge disappointment.


So much of what people are claiming are Mutiny issues are actually permanent structural issues with Lightning itself for as long as we do not have covenants. (Yes I’m oversimplifying for brevity)
Bitcoin has scaling limitations. Dunking on devs and rooting for their failure just helps ensure we won’t get the apps and companies we need in the future.


Our countries are similar… they screw is similarly 😉

The mistake I made back then was sticking with what I knew like there would be a return or recovery. I just don’t think that happens anymore.


Well, he took the money and ran. What else do you expect? 😂


No, he raised enough money to say fuck you and ran


You didn’t explain anything, but “I fell out of love with Bitcoin” says enough.
Bye


Give up after less than a year = scrappy? I think they got fat from the money raised and ran


Lol


Thanks for investing and for sharing these thoughts.


No question regarding their talent. Can’t speak to anything on a personal level beyond what I’ve seen them post on social media. My main point is that the decision to completely shut down the wallet and the way the announcement was made is not in line with their messaging for the past year since launching the app publicly.


that fedi experiment ended up blowing up. probably ran the numbers on the premium subscription and realized that won't cut it. pivot seems like a reasonable decision to me.


You call it dunking on devs. I call it asking for clarity and transparency.


Thank you this is helpful feedback. I applaud their effort and talent. The announcement was sudden and out of the blue, and not in line with their messaging since launching a year ago. I think any company building a product that people rely on for using money ought to carefully consider how they make decisions and changes and how they communicate those out to users.


Fucking hard indeed!


It’s been a year since launch so I don’t doubt they used a lot of funds in that time. Labor, resources, etc, aren’t chea, even for a small team. But something about it didn’t smell right the way it was suddenly announced.


They have a public blog post answering every question you asked minus giving exact dollar amount which isn’t a fair expectation


“Fuck that and fuck them unless they’re more forthright with everyone about what’s going on.”

so polite!


I feel like that’s fair criticism.


I understand. Thanks


c'mon man. you can't expect these dipshits to read. they have dunking to do and bad takes to have!


Yes and gfy too 🫂 I’m just speaking in Tony’s native tongue.


“I fell out of love with bitcoin” was the sleaziest excuse ever.  He should open up
the books to stop people speculating 😂


Appreciate the responses. I believe you’re probably doing the best you know how and hope for the best for you and your team.


That statement was odd lol


Are you claiming they stole money? That doesn’t appear to be the case. Even investors such as nostr:npub1rtlqca8r6auyaw5n5h3l5422dm4sry5dzfee4696fqe8s6qgudks7djtfs have come out and said they don’t think anything shady happened. So no money appears to have been misappropriated. They gave very advanced notice that it’s shutting down so you can take out your money easily, and no users got rugged. They transparently described many struggles they’ve had along the way, both in blog posts and in podcasts. Hence how I know not have covenants is/was frustrating.


yeah, it is a corkscrew going downwards, at some point the people are gonna realise they have no more cork to go and flip out, guillotines time


Intuition is not to be toyed with.


Most do not want the realization because it means they must change and make effort


“Donations means you gave me the money and you don’t have the right to expect anything” Really? Why did you think people donated? So you can have a fat paycheck? 😂


I am confused about what you are complaining about.

I was a plus subscriber. I had invested in some fat channels for the future. I lost Satoshis when the DNS error occurred. I’m not complaining.

Mutiny was buggy as hell but it was the only wallet that checked all the boxes for what I wanted. I personally gave their team endless grief over glitches and bugs on nostr. I’m sure there is more to the story than what we have heard but new businesses fail all the time. They don’t really owe us anything.


yeah, i think that it's coming in the next cycle for them, we are deeper in recession than we were during the great depression by orders of magnitude, worse than the winter of our discontent, tecehnological deflation is hiding it


Mutiny+ I always looked at as a donation for helping build out the wallet. I can confirm I haven't been charged the past two months either. I guess that was a sign of things to come. Its been a rough year for wallets and devs. Sorry to hear you got burnt out.  Giving everyone until the end of the year to migrate off or self host I think is plenty of time as well. Honestly there is no perfect way to do this. I get people wanting transparency and being dissapointed but you also got to see it from the devs side. Its not that easy. Best wishes for the your future endeavors. I hope the Bitcoin sparks come back for you one day. I am seeing more people losing the passion for Bitcoin since its becoming more about the fiat number going up instead of the freedom roots it all started from. More people working on number go up friendly regulation instead of the shit that matters like the Samurai case. With no privacy there is no freedom. I hope the tide shifts back in the upcoming years maybe during the next bear market.


Problem is, the mainstream kids just don’t see it that way. They don’t try to. They believe what they are taught in high school and by the media. They don’t comprehend the forces affecting their lives.


Just another Ten31 success story


Haha my only interaction with him was in short Nostr replies. And was basically, “yep, it is what it is.  enjoy the tool. Or don’t.”


at some point reality will pierce the membrane of brainwashing, it is inevitable that eventually the tricks run out of effect, it's the same as how eventually printing more money becomes impossible due to literally mathematics (and wheelbarrows)

speaking of that last one, they have a trick against the appearance of wheelbarrows but the dizzying moves of NGU will show it, that is still to come


Honestly I feel they tried to do too much too soon.  Hopefully their next endeavors will bring them more success.


he doesn't beat around the bush. but he's a good person.


I never want to judge too harshly on text interactions and I can usually give benefit of the doubt until I meet someone in person. It was just getting expensive for me to want to keep throwing money at for the, just suck it up attitude.


Farewell, 16,000 sats.


I have not found a single open source toC application case. ToC applications lack a positive incentive mechanism for open source. Zuckerberg open sourced Llama because Meta missed the best time. He was forced to open source by competition and surpass OpenAI by imitating Android. The other reasons are all high-sounding. He is not an open source advocate. These vested interests who advocate open source are also unwilling to open source their current successful applications. The successful open source companies I have seen are toB companies. Most of the successful open source software companies open source some common tools in some emerging industries. For example, the big data and AI industries. After more companies use this tool on github, they provide value-added services around the tool. For example, Databricks.

Starting a business is difficult. You have to face team salary and product revenue issues every day. Lightning wallets also need to face legal risks. I understand Tony's pressure, but this is the price of creating new things. You can take a break if you feel you can't stand it. This is a rare opportunity to reflect and grow. It is common for startups to fail, and failure is a way to find the right path. But Tony needs to consider his future direction. "I've fallen out of love for Bitcoin and the industry."


You are welcome but you got the harder job so thanks for all the work you have done. You guys did build something pretty great.  I also got a feeling the best is yet to come for you as well. I'm sure this whole thing is an emotional rollercoaster especially dealing with the comments.  Some of it will be good feedback that should be listened to but others are just going assholes so do your best to not let those affect you. Best wishes.


sure. that's understandable.


3 salaries plus freelancers, tech infra subscriptions, servers etc, any marketing etc. It goes fast.


This is an estimate of what they should have to keep going, not what they had. I have no idea what they had. Loved their product, hope to see it again in some form.


Bitcoin is a pain in the ass for users and 10x so for developers. Doesn't mean we should stop trying to make it work because it's the only thing that can stop the full on tyranny freight train.


I hope the tide shifts back to one where privacy is valued too. At least with open source software the tools are out there for when people, and hopefully businesses, want to use them.


I was warned about this situation for more than a year,
But usually people ignore Darth's warnings... and they will always pay the consequences for ignoring my warnings...

https://i.postimg.cc/c4fzycYQ/darth-advice.jpg


Lightning wallets are hard. Non custodial lightning wallets are harder. Making a business out of an economically sustainable non custodial lightning wallet that is privacy preserving and competitive is insanely hard.

Sometimes things don’t work out. Even good ideas built by brilliant people sometimes (most of the time) don’t work out.

If you didn’t read the blog post, you should. If you read it you should read it again. Lot of answers in there.


Are you speaking from any kind of experience here? Got any software business or investing results of your own to back up your opinion?


Did they get donations and grants, or was it just VC money?  VCs expect to lose money on some ideas, so there is a risk/reward aspect there.


Of course bro.


Thanks for the reply 🙏 I’ve gotten several good responses including some from Tony that help give more context, and have re-read the blog post and combed through some of the discussion on Stacker News. The news was just sudden, at least for the end users. Mutiny has been one of very few wallets that showed a lot of promise for Nostr users in particular. Maybe it should have been tested more before launching publicly, or maybe it was too overhyped for what it was able to actually do as a wallet, I don’t know. I appreciate their work both on the wallet and their contributions to bitcoin and lightning.


Yes they were a grant recipient from OpenSats last July.


I was with Tony, Ben and Paul in Bitcoin Commons in Austin when they were launching Mutiny & explaining how they'll monetize... and that you're in.

I though it was quite good play considering the talent of the team.


I felt good about it. Still do.


Way better than 90+% of the bets I've seen in startup land over the last decade+. Also, they're shutting down the product, not the company... have been hard at work for quite a while.

I had no idea there was this much discussion on it. From what I read today, it seems to me more about people caring about their success and struggling to express it than anything else.


Absolutely. I think that’s the correct read. It just goes to show what a passionate customer base they built. Which is a testament to the team.


Awesome product. Great team. Passionate, but small customer base.

Perhaps too focused on “western” adoption?

Cool product for their passionate customer base, but a “nice to have” vs a “need to have” when focus of primary base is on SOV vs MOE.


that's a lot of money. i read somewhere else its a few times more but 300k is a lot of money. it's important to see how much money flows through this space (both open source and bitcoin), what is being used for and the outcome. What was the effort in user adoption ?

man, people are so privileged - Just come here, ra ra abut bitcoin, take in half a million, a year later say opps sorry, i tried, didnt work, bye bye. This is insane.


I think we all want to see self custodial lightning succeed with a degree of ease on par with custodial lightning, especially where it intersects with nostr like Mutiny did. It was an exciting and promising product, and I think the hopes of it getting better with time kept people on board even with the channel closures and other issues. The ecash integration was exciting. The fact that it runs in a browser was exciting. And all you had to do was download an app or save a PWA to your phone. The hiccups were frustrating but perhaps tolerable as their work continued. But then this announcement came out of the blue, and speaking for myself it felt like they weren’t saying everything. I respect what they built and the talent it took to do it. It felt like they spent the last year building huge momentum and everyone’s trust, and abruptly pulled the plug on the very thing they built that trust on. It’s just very disappointing.


Agreed


With the very recent change in leadership, including Marks as new Chief Product Officer, my guess would be that they have a new product or direction already in mind and just not ready yet to announce what it is.

If I had my druthers, it would be web of trust related.🤞🏻


I’m curious. Tony said in an earlier reply that they weren’t building another wallet, so I’m wondering what else they may be working on.


I'm honestly sad to see Mutiny shut down.

Startups are super hard. Businesses targeted toward power-users are even harder.

From the outside, if there's something I think we can learn from this great work, I think there's a lesson in that. We need to know our customers. Most customers aren't power-users.

Mutiny was really growing on me in the past few months. I featured it heavily in my recent Nostr article. I was an active user. As a literal user I'm sad to see it shut down. What a great wallet it has been. Great work from the team.


so just assume users are dumb and even subhuman and make some AI prison that they will love?


the influencer cartel was the major part of this.