Oddbean new post about login | logout One thing was made painfully clear tonight while @AviBurra, @Run with Bitcoin and I tried to split a restaurant check: Lightning wallets are not even close to being ready for adoption in the physical world.
Why not?
Because they’re generally unreliable. Doesn’t matter if they’re custodial or not if they can’t find routes, time out when trying to pay, or freeze for unknown reasons.
What happened? Bad reception? cumbersome splitting of bill?
Wallet of Satoshi wasn’t loading at all. My Zeus alpha with embedded node didn’t complete sync even after restarting, so it couldn’t pay an invoice. My Umbrel node at home is down for an unknown reason. Muun was being Muun. Finally paid the invoice using Phoenix. You shouldn’t have to have five wallets just to be able to complete one payment.
Yeah agreed. I haven’t had to pay for anything worth lightning in a situation like this (even at pubkey their system was down so I paid for my drinks in dollars). Not saying we won’t get there and payment systems have billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours for redundancy built in.
I must say, I’ve had the exact opposite experience. What was the hang up?
You would have had to be there to fully appreciate it.
Hmmm. I split bills with my friends all the time and have mixes between fiat and BTC over Lightning. I have a couple buddies that jump on the bill and then ask for sats from us Bitcoiners. Never had any issues. In fact, I got a couple of them hooked with how seamless and fast it was.
What issues did you hit? Surely it could be tons of things, but one bill splitting tip is AMP invoices. If you split everything down the middle (and everyone is using LND) you can create one invoice that all your friends can pay.
All of them, dude. We had all the issues.
My node went offline the minute I left home, so that was out of the question. I then tried to pay using Zeus Alpha, but it hung on the “getting ready screen” and never updated, so that was out. Wallet of Satoshi wouldn’t even load. My last hope was Phoenix, which finally worked. It really shouldn’t be this hard. https://i.nostr.build/B0MD.jpg
How it usually plays out. Someone hands over their fiat credit card, they then get showered in non kyc sats. How did you guys manage to fuck this up? 😂
The wallets wouldn’t cooperate! Thank goodness the waiter refused to let us tip him in sats. That would have been so embarrassing! 🤣
You had a bad day, happens with any other kind of service as well. Good thing was you were still able to pay. We’ll make it better with time.
I think it’s important to tell it like it is and not sugar-coat things. We are nowhere near the Venmo level of “it just works” yet.
Venmo doesn’t work across borders, and even then, venmo goes down due to “internal issues” as well? https://x.com/venmosupport/status/1616928022871044097
Yes, but I’m not talking about cross-border payments and occasional server outages, which happen to every centralized service at some point or another. I’m just talking about how it took several attempts using multiple wallets to be able to pay one invoice on a random Tuesday evening.
I understand your frustration, I’m not saying there aren’t problems. I’m just pointing out that this could’ve happened to you even with venmo on a random Tuesday evening as well, it is a one off event, where none of your lightning apps worked. Lightning however is just a protocol. It does not go down. If anything I see this as a bad customer experience for @Wallet of Satoshi as a custodial wallet you should guarantee uptime. Maybe publish uptime stats, that’d give users a lot of confidence. All the other apps you listed a were self custody solutions which are always going to depend on your hardware, internet connectivity, and peers you’ve opened a channel with.
Why are custodial wallets awesome for orange pilling ? @The: Daniel⚡️ @AviBurra Have something to share! Good night nostriches! nostr:nevent1qqsvta3rm98xp9n88kcj74h8mrhdjdw2vtwjl605pdv3606w8m9w8vgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpmnw5yatnljuff5w47d35d87q99xddqpzlzsac4xzn6vm22ekmn5qvzqqqqqqy0affqr https://video.nostr.build/deed13bc65543c79264597fb52071237f1313fc560da838a7d7db13d4aa0cfe6.mp4 nostr:nevent1qqsvta3rm98xp9n88kcj74h8mrhdjdw2vtwjl605pdv3606w8m9w8vgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpmnw5yatnljuff5w47d35d87q99xddqpzlzsac4xzn6vm22ekmn5qvzqqqqqqy0affqr
Why?
Relax man, nobody’s in a hurry to accept it yet anyway!
