Oddbean

As someone who actually tests different wallets regularly and gives user feedback, I can confidently say that there are no silver bullets yet, and self-custodial Lightning is a chore to set up for most people. The masses aren’t coming to learn about liquidity and channel balancing and HTLCs. You have to want to use it because you care about the MOE case for bitcoin. In Western countries, it’s not really needed yet, but in some parts of the world, it’s a matter of survival.

As long as you need something running 24-7 + need to manage liquidity + worry about routes/failed payments, it's unlikely to be mass adopted in a self-custodial way. Everyone does it out of love and as a hobby.

False. There are thousands of people and businesses using it non-custodially for real economic activity because Lightning is the fastest and cheapest way to settle payments online. Always has been, likely will be for a long time.

Good straw manning Sir. All your pep talk, dismissive troll-calling and attacking good willed people from outside the IT world who are giving real feedback from lived experience won't change what us, the non-devs are struggling with. You are among a small group of people who understand all this naturally and think that Zeus wallet UI is for normal people. You lost sight of the streets. Your arrogant attitude is what drives custodial adoption. Check your privilege mate or you soon can enjoy your little Lightning bubble by yourself. In case you want that, be the big fish in a tiny pond, you're doing great.

self hosting LN may never reach mass adoption. not because it sucks, it is growing elegantly actually. because people are lazy and the habit of offloading the burden of self custody to others has been carved into humans gene

But, you just described a public routing node which is not, I repeat, NOT for regular users. First off, and this is really important, it's PUBLIC. When has anything designed for public use, ever been suitable for private use? A public routing node provides routing services for the lightning network for fun and profit. It has to ADVERTISE itself to the world to attract other nodes to connect to, and use it's services. A public routing node requires a good working knowledge of Linux CLI and the knowledge and ability to secure an Internet facing server. It's advertising itself to the world. It's going to be attacked. Add to that a static IP, decent bandwidth, and a fairly grunty machine if it gets busy. And, liquidity. If you haven't got a decent chunk of Bitcoin to provide a significant number of channels with enough liquidity to be useful to the network, you're waisting your time, money, electricity, hardware and effort. This is not the setup a regular person needs for a lightning wallet. End uses use a private, non-routing non-custodial wallet that doesn't need to be online 24/7, doesn't need channels balanced, because it doesn't route other people's payments. It uses unannounced private channels so neither the wallet, the node, or the channels will show on any lightning network maps, or be traceable in any way. There's litterly no way to ever know if a private wallet exists. A private non-routing non-custodial lightning wallet, is private. No channels it uses can be seen by anyone. No payments made, or received can be traced by anyone. This setup can run on a cheap mobile phone. And there's plenty of options for private, non-routing, non-custodial lightning wallets for mobile phones. Phoenix wallet has to be the easiest non-custodial, non-routing wallet to use. I have used Phoenix, now I use Zeus on mobile.

1. I'm describing end user nodes. Every node has to manage liquidity and routes some way or another otherwise you can't send or receive. It's not a routing node exclusive concern. 2. Unnanounced channels are NOT private. They are easily found by probing and looking on-chain. Don't operate under that assumption nor perpetuate that misnomer myth. If you want a real world example of a end user self custodial pain: nostr:nevent1qqsxw2vm768zzw59sgzggrs8gymrpcvtang2cwgnmw7uc49kkpf2q2spzdmhxw309akx7cmpd35x7um58g6rsd3eqgsdph4ln7cjmmup7s7hc62znwmcfqf2c8jd94f6yqkmd2k8af95vmqrqsqqqqqpds9u4y

> 1. I'm describing end user nodes. Every node has to manage liquidity and routes No it doesn't. Fuck off with your bullshit. At least go an RTFM before making such stupid statements. Or, you're not ignorant and you're intentionally lying to push a shitcoin. Let me guess, if I do a quick look into your history, is there a lot of shitcoin promoting there? Soooo...what's the bet? Is he an ignorant fool or shitcoin scammer?

Ah, ok. I've won that argument now that you've started with the personal insults. Why don't you take your own advice and stick to the topic rather than degrading yourself like that. You have a lightening node that you've opened public announced channels, but you think you have a private node. The evidence is you complaining about having to balance channels which you don't have to do with private channels. So, you don't have any idea about how to setup LND as a private lightning wallet, instead, you setup a poorly optimised, low liquidity, badly connected public routing node because you didn't do any research. And now you just complain about nothing working properly. Your own ignorance is your problem.