Get Next Unused Address

lnbits / watchonly

MIT License

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Get Next Unused Address #13

Open dadofsambonzuki opened 5 months ago

dadofsambonzuki commented 5 months ago

We (BTC Map) are currently using api_fresh_address_watchonly to generate new bitcoin addresses for donations.

We are currently getting large gaps between addresses as we get a new address on each page load of the support us page.

It would be good to get the next unused address instead via a getNextUnusedAddress call.

motorina0 commented 5 months ago

Just a short background on how the onchain extension works:

it uses mempool.space APIs for querying for address balances
the querying takes place on the front-end when the user clicks Scan Blockchain
- the user's browser calls the mempool.space API (not the LNbits backend)
- the reason for this decision is that mempool.space has rate-limiter and it would have blocked the back-end
this means that the front-end gets the latest data from the API and calls the lnbits back-end to update the balance for the addresses

So if you are using the API to get the Next Receive address it will work fine, but if the front-end is not used to check the balance then the back-end cannot know which addresses have funds and which not.

motorina0 commented 5 months ago

Also you might want to check the TipJar extension. The TipJar via Satspay will update the balance of the address (back-end call)

secondl1ght commented 5 months ago

I have some questions about this:

Why does this use the mempool.space API instead of the bitcoin core node that the lightning node is connected to in order to query the address balances?
Are you saying that the TipJar extension will achieve the desired behaviour of only returning the next unused address and that we should use it instead of this extension?

motorina0 commented 5 months ago

The user can have a LSP as a funding source, so it has no access to either a Lighting Node or a Bitcoin Node. The mempool.space API is used in order to quickly allow users to set-up their wallet without requiring complex configurations.
TipJar generates an address at the moment the user wants to make a donation. On the back-end the server will watch for funds reaching this address. You can give it a spin on the demo server. It works for both Lightning and Onchain donations.