Your definition of Uncle Jim's bank is not correct. Helping a friend to use BlueWallet, Zeus, Breez or Phoenix is not really risky, they will just be a user of these app. However if you create accounts for them on your node, Lnbits, BTCPay or a Cashu mint, then you are the bank and have great responsabilities.

It all feels risky when these apps stop supporting their projects like Phoenix and Mutiny. Phoenix left the US market and said they would stop serving US customers Mutiny is shutting down and requires self hosting. Without notifying the friends that you onboarded they could get rugged. I love Zeus and I don't think it's going away, and it's a node in the phone so there is no rug risk. I did have to help people move away from it because the complexity often left them with locked funds or bad channel states. Alby Hub feels like the best self custody option right now, but it's definitely dependent on Alby Accounts, creating another risk. I'm simplying telling people to take Uncle Jim's life seriously, because you may need to notify people of deprecation even when a wallet is self custody in practice.

Definitely. I want to say I agree fully, and I'm super glad this exists. I will definitely be using this for my kids. But where the post comes from is having experiences with running LNDhub for friends from meetups in the early days of lightning. Sometimes they would stack 1000s of dollars to my little raspberry pi node, and it was worrying to be liable for that much money. I had to eventually tell them to custody their own funds and I shut down the LNDhub after moving them to Phoenix wallet. Phoenix then ended US support and I had to notify them. Then they moved to Mutiny, which is shutting down now. It's rough being Uncle Jim, and it follows you even when they are self-custodied wallets. I tell everyone to self host now if possible, because i've had these experiences of sunsetting, shutdowns, and deprecation. My wife is running her own Alby Hub now, so there is no need for custody, but this journey has shown me that Uncle Jim's job is no joke, and I wouldn't do it outside the family! Alby is the best self custody solution so far, and i'm hoping it's sucess as a long lasting product so I don't have any more awkward deprecation conversations.

Thanks for sharing your experience and your push for people to self custody. It’s definitely been a bumpy road so far. Alby Hub reception has been great so far, let’s see how the next months go!

Excellent advice. This is the approach I’ve taken as well.

^

Ok, I understand your point. Luckily I'm not in US so Phoenix is still one of the best option with Breez. Both, as well as Mutiny, are self-custodial, so nobody will get rug what ever happen. There is always the possibility to close all channels and send funds to an on-chain address, even if it could get more or less tricky in some cases, like you mention for Zeus. I didn't test Alby Hub, it looks like similar to a self-hosted BlueWallet LndHub with some more functionality but nothing that cannot be done with LNbits already. I will definitely give a try on my node anyway. In any case it's already advanced use cases and if you create account for your friends on your Alby Hub, it's basically like if you create account for them on your BTCPay Server, LNbits, LndHub or eCash mint, same responsabilites to have them updated and on top your must ensure you don't fuck up with your node and loose some or all the sats there, yours and theirs. While I attend meetup, I still recommend testing Lightning first with some sats, up to 10-20$ worth max, with WalletOfSatoshi, then move to Phoenix for normal user or Breez for merchants (PoS with boltcard support), finally when ready they can move to Zeus, Sparrow, hardware wallet or eventually running a node if they feel to, at least to connect their wallet for self-checking on-chain data. It's a journey, everyone will do it differently, some will be confortable doing Uncle Jim's bank, some won't, but it's better to do something for adoption, than just sit and wait.