Oddbean

Is there an easy wallet to onboard people to that has a lightning address without having to pay to open a channel? I think this the issue right now. We need more choices where you hold your own keys.

No. The problem hasn’t been solved from a technical perspective yet. There are other alternatives which are actual wallets, like Zeus, Phoenix, and Muun. All three have different trade offs, but users maintain custody of their funds. Zaps are fun, but the purpose of Bitcoin is not to be able to auto-receive micropayments. Bitcoin is self-sovereign, bearer, debasement-proof money. It needs to be used correctly to gain those benefits. An FTX account won’t ever be as good as an on-chain address in cold storage. Once people understand Bitcoin and have sent or received real on-chain or real lightning sats, then they can experiment with custodial payments solutions. If you start them off with Wallet of Satoshi and call it a Bitcoin wallet however, you’re building a very poor security foundation for new users. I wish they would just rebrand to “Bank of Satoshi”🤣 There’s no shame in that, and it would be much more obvious what their relationship is to their customers and their funds.

To clarify further, you can SEND zaps in a 100% self-custodial way currently. There just isn’t any reasonable way to generate new invoices and receive them automatically without using a third party payment provider. I’m confident someone will create a solution soon, and it’s more of a user experience problem than a fundamental flaw.