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ACINQ / phoenix

Phoenix is a self-custodial Bitcoin wallet using Lightning to send/receive payments.
https://phoenix.acinq.co
Apache License 2.0
675 stars 97 forks source link

messaging with phoenix? (keysend) #73

Open philbertw4 opened 4 years ago

philbertw4 commented 4 years ago

Dear phoenix/acinq team,

First of all, I want to commend you on the work you've done with phoenix. By re-imagining the UX experience for what a bitcoin/lightning wallet can/should from a seamless, easy-to-use, perspective, I think you've moved the needle in a positive direction by quite a bit!

One of the reasons why I've found phoenix so much easier to use when it comes to onboarding less technically sophisticated users is how you guys essentially underwrite those initial channels. I realize there are security/privacy trade-offs (even if temporary) by having the wallet auto-peer with acinq such that instantaneous "channels" can be created. But given that the wallet remains non-custodial, and the usability (and risk of payment/routing failure) is vastly improved, this seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for now.

One thing I have wondered now is whether it might be possible to incorporate some sort of keysend functionality into phoenix. There seems to be a lot of promise in the various messaging-on-top-of-lightning projects (e.g. whatsat, juggernaut, etc), but for new people, especially those without full nodes already, to try those out it still requires a considerable time investment.

I wonder if, because of the clever way you handle the initial channels in phoenix, it might be possible for phoenix to essentially emulate keysend functionality for end users?

t-bast commented 4 years ago

Thanks for the kind words @philbertw4! Regarding keysend, have you looked at lnurl? Phoenix already supports some of the lnurl actions, which addresses the same issues as keysend (and more).

Let us know if that doesn't address the scenario you have in mind.

philbertw4 commented 4 years ago

Hi @t-bast, Thanks for your thoughts. I will look into lnurl further and revert back here if it doesn't seem to fit.

bitcoinuser commented 4 years ago

I really would like to see Phoenix with a chat like interface (or even with chat support too). Something like https://pine.pm/. So I could send payments to my contacts without need to request an invoice. Maybe could be something like this: I pay an invoice and after I pay it, Phoenix ask me if I want to add the user who I paid as contact. Maybe on invoice could exist some information like keysend. Maybe this information about contacts could be stored on a phone folder and other wallets with contacts support could read this same file on the same folder, so the contacts will be synchronized between different wallets.