jb55 @jb55 - 2mo
When considering accepting cashu for my anonymous ai proxy i ran into this dilemma. Can cashu people please explain this to me. Is providing this option mainly a convenience for the users who prefer using evash? Can’t their cashu wallet just do lightning without doing this dance to begin with? I am continually baffled at what the point of ecash is when it appears to be just a clunky and redundant interface on top of lightning. nostr:note1cthvrsmm49xaclslc66sg86wrgwvntw37qejl950uh0t9yxgn49ql4v7gc
TKay @TKay - 2mo
I like it, but I still don’t see it either. Ecash = zero until it redeemed on lightning… So why did we cashu in the first place.
exactly ? I’m not going to accept the payment until i redeem it as a lightning payment to my node, since it could be a bullshit token. So it’s just a slower payment method now? Who is benefiting from this? Users get slower payments, seller has to do extra work. Still uses lightning at the end of the day to verify. Please make it make sense.
The only way I can think of justifying it, is if there is a Huuuge mint, and it issues and redeems for aaaaall users. With minimal need to go back to Lightning. But then… that’s just a mildly less centralized table. 🤷♂️
yeah lightning wouldn’t work in some places where visa works, like in an airplane with no wifi. so this is where ecash works better, but you could rugpull the airline right when you get back online unless they redeem before you
Everyone risk tolerance.
You can verify they are real. But you can’t verify that they exist, have not been double spent, or the mint closed while you are holding the verified token.
can you show me code that does this? I find that hard to believe. At the end of the day unless the sats are in my lightning channel i’m calling bs.
Usually these have fees because they are providing non-custodial lightning solutions which have onchain fee cost. Comparing this with a custodial option doesn’t really make much sense. You should compare it with custodial lightning instead, which typically doesn’t have any fees (coinos, wos). The only benefit at that point is privacy for users on the node.
It’s just a proof that the mint signed it, the mint could be bs, so the proof doesn’t really mean anything unless its a mint you trust.
At the end of the day, when accepting these payments the only way to truly verify if it’s legit is to redeem it to your lightning node. For the offline mint case you could really only do that with a whitelist of mints you trust, which isn’t actually that bad.
Although it would be bad for the user, since they likely wouldn’t have the exact same mint that is whitelisted, so the offline benefits dematerialize
isn’t this terrible for the users who tries to pay and it fails? seems like you would only want to do this in the offline case, but accept any + redeem to lightning for everything else
> Server responds with Cashu payment request (encodes requirements like which mint to use, which pubkey to lock to, amount, etc.) Ah nice thats the key bit that makes this work. If the wallet can support this swap automatically then great! very cool.
true
but do you currently accept token from any mint or from a whitelist? that is the main thing I couldn't get my head around. it sounds like the cashu devs are working on a swap mechanism for wallets so that this is seamless for the user.
If you are already using a custodial lightning wallet, you can think of them as the same thing but with better privacy.
The Daniel ⚡️ and 84 sats @daniel - 2mo
But potentially much less reliable because you really need to trust the person or entity who’s running the mint will not just shut it down randomly because it’s an unpaid hobby project of theirs, vs. a company offering a custodial wallet as a business.
yeah this is a big factor, not sure of any reputable, established mints.
yeah pretty much, if you are using a custodial lightning wallet and you’re happy with it, then there’s not any huge benefit to using ecash i see it as an extra value add as a merchant for customers who care about privacy.
It won’t work as a retail tool because merchants need assurance of settlement. Lightning is better for that purpose. If you as a customer want to pay with ecash over Lightning it still works fine, but there’s no reason for a merchant to have to connect to a random mint to receive your payment because it adds unnecessary friction and risk.
