IMO, it doesn’t help that as soon as someone joins, every "Nostr influencer", bot, and even some enthusiastic maxis start coaching them to set up a non-custodial wallet so they "can be zapped", which is supposedly "the Nostr experience". Most folks end up using something like Alby, receive a few sats, and then realise they have to pay to open channels, setup a ligthining node or sign up for an expensive cloud subscription just to actually receive their welcome zaps. It’s frustrating and feels like a scam. By that point, the damage is done... both to Nostr and to new users perception of BTC. If they were already sceptical, this just becomes "proof" that it’s all a scam. If they weren’t, chances are they’ll become sceptical now.
I’ve got nothing against Alby or any of the BTC businesses here, but if the BTC influencers, maxis, and businesses could please, please, stop sending newcomers down a path where losing sats and paying for unnecessary services becomes their very first experience with Nostr, I’d be immensely grateful.
By the way, before anyone says I’m exaggerating, this has happened to three different people I onboarded. The last one was @Quokka (he/they). I’ve lost a few sats myself due to the non-custodial wallet "temporarily holds your sats until you pay" limbo.
To all the Lightning enthusiasts out there: if you really want new users to start zapping, just point them toward WoS or one of the other custodial wallets. You don’t have to like custodial wallets, and you can absolutely encourage users to move to non-custodial ones or withdraw on-chain once they have enough sats. Just don’t let their very first experience be “set up this very complicated stack or pay us $9.90 per month” so they can retrieve a few hundred sats received in their first month. Otherwise, you’re mostly damaging not just Nostr’s reputation, but BTC’s as well.
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Yep. The set up a lightning address welcome bots pretty much guarantee kind 1 clients never take off.
Clients and relays should try to block these bots as much as possible. And honestly (I don't mind becoming persona non grata on Nostr) we should start calling out this kind of behaviour towards new users.
For example, if we see someone recommending that others install Alby Go (mentioning Alby again only because it's where plenty of new users end up), we should take the opportunity to explain that using a non-custodial Lightning wallet involves an upfront investment of both time and sats, as well as some technical knowledge to setup. We should also share a link to a reasonably neutral list of both custodial and non-custodial wallets, ideally with a couple of easy-to-understand paragraphs explaining the trade-offs, including the risks and a transparent breakdown of fees. (Same for Cashu stuff, etc, etc, etc).
You don't need your own Lightning Network node. A Coinos wallet does not require opening and closing channels by a user. Keep it simple for new nostr users.
Exactly. Unfortunately, everyone points new users towards non-custodial wallets for a variety of reasons. Custodial solutions do carry risks, and we’ve had some pretty spectacular incidents in the past. But we need a more balanced approach than just "everything should be non-custodial... Must.. onboard... new... user! Must tell them to run a Lightning node… and a full BTC node… and buy this cloud subscription… and this box with software to run BTC + Nostr relays"... Just let new users chill a bit, let them say hi, post some cat pictures and follow a couple of people. If they want to setup a custodial wallet and get zapped for their cat pics, let them. If not, this is more than fine as well. We should 100% stop bombarding new users with all of the Lightning stuff.
Coinos has been thoroughly compromised and should no longer be used!
Cashu is cool, and I use it. Alhough some Mint runners are currently charging quite a premium and we should call them out as much we call out the lighting payment services salespeople on Nostr.
Given that it's "newer" tech I think it's impressive for sure. I honestly have less issues with it than with Lightning nodes going offline, channels closing, etc. So I think that tech like Cashu or Spark may be a better alternative for folks zapping a few hundred or thousand sats a month on Nostr. Unfortunately I don't think that any tech will end the "custodial" debate though. No matter how efficiently the underlying tech mitigates risks, there always be trade-offs. Lets see how all of this evolve.