Citadel Dispatch

Share on social media:

EPISODE: 70

BLOCK: 744604

PRICE: 4882 sats per dollar

TOPICS: private lightning wallet, vortex, austin bitcoin design club, tor tradeoffs, open source licenses

https://citadeldispatch.com/cd70

@futurepaul: https://twitter.com/futurepaul

support the show: https://citadeldispatch.com/contribute

twitch: https://twitch.tv/citadeldispatch  

bitcointv: https://bitcointv.com/video-channels/citadeldispatch/videos

podcast: https://www.podpage.com/citadeldispatch  

telegram: https://t.me/citadeldispatch

stream sats to the show: https://www.fountain.fm/

join the chat: https://matrix.to/#/#citadel:bitcoin.kyoto

[00:00:36] Unknown:

Happy Bitcoin.   Monday, freaks.   It's Monday. Right?   It's a lot. It is. It's gonna check. It's the start of a long week.   There'll be many dispatches this week.   Make sure,   if you wanna get notified, either join our matrix chat.  

[00:00:57] Unknown:

Oh, no.   Oh, no. There we go.  

[00:01:01] Unknown:

Sorry. We had some technical difficulties in the studio, but we are back now.   It's gonna be a long week. A lot of great conversations are gonna be happening here at the studio.   We got the start,   of this week with Citadel dispatch 70 with our good friend, Tony, who was here last week,   and Paul Miller, who's in town now.   Our primary discussion today will be focused on using lightning privately, but we'll be going all over the place.   If you wanna participate in the live chat, you can do that through Twitch or Twitter or our matrix chat, which you can find at citadel.chat.   I did set up a YouTube for dispatch so you could get notified when we go live and also participate in the chat, But there's a 24 hour delay when you enable live streams.  

So this will be the last one that is not streamed there as well. I will post the the video clip there afterwards.   But if you are a YouTube user, you can go and subscribe there, and dispatches going forward will be there. As always, I wanna thank all the ride or die freaks who continue to support the show   and keep it ad free and sponsor free. Really could not do it without you.   As always, the easiest way to support the show is through podcasting 2 point o apps. My favorites are Breezewallet,   fountain podcast, and there's another one, podverse.fm,   if you wanna do it from the browser.  

You can go in there. You can set how many sats per minute you think the show is worth. As you listen, it'll automatically stream sats   to my node and also   to the nodes of various open source projects that dispatch is supporting.   Those projects include   OpenSats, RaspiBlitz,   RoboSats, Seed Signer, Sparrow Wallet,   and Zeus.   So if you support   dispatch through podcasting 2 point o, not only do you keep this show ad free and sponsor free, completely audience funded, but you also support those great open source projects.   You can also support the show using my pay name, which is Odell   or the BTC pay server that's at sidildispatch.com.  

So once again, thanks to everyone who continues support the show. And if you don't have stats to spare, subscribing in your favorite podcast app by searching citadel dispatch or subscribing on YouTube, Twitch,   Twitter,   Rumble,   does help the show, and I do appreciate it. As we start off every show, we're gonna start with the top boost, which is also a feature on podcasting 2 point o. It's called the Boostagram.   That's a one time payment   of your choosing that also gets split with the open source projects, and you get to include a message with it. I will read the top 4 Boostagrams.   We have Tim Thielman with 20,000 sats.  

Thanks for your leadership.   You've inspired the start up of our Bitcoin meetup in Victoria, BC.   A question, many Bitcoiners I meet don't wanna spend only a HODL, but this leaves exchanges at choke points for government regulation, predatory tax, and seizure,   which impairs the store value they are holding for. How can we overcome this incentive mismatch   to grow the circular economies we will eventually need?   So that's a question.   Before we answer that, I'm gonna read the other 3 boostograms. We have shout out we have Odiums with 11,000 sats saying shout out to the Raspberry Blitz team and Root Soul, Open Arms and Co, Best Node Project, and thanks, Matt, for supporting the Raspberry Blitz Step Fund through value for value.   We have Rick Amaru with 10,000 stats. I will stream stats to you all day for this level of discussion, Odell. Keep it up, brother. Peace.  

And we have Kobe saying,   the split is breaking the boost for 10,000 sats. Well, clearly, his boost to gram went through, so I'm gonna continue to push the limits with the number of splits we have.   Before we get started with the show, I guess let's introduce our guests first.   We have returned guest and good friend, Paul Miller at future Paul on Twitter. How's it going, Paul? It's going good. Thank you for having me back. Appreciate it, man. And then we have good friend, Tony Giorgio, in the house. How's it going, Tony? My name is Giovanni Giorgio,  

[00:04:58] Unknown:

but everybody calls me Giorgio.   So, guys, it's good to be back.  

[00:05:11] Unknown:

Tony is,   such a rider, I guess, that now he has his own space on the soundboard,   going forward. So you'll probably hear Tony,   a lot more for the rest of the week.   So let's go to this question real quick before we get started.   Basically, it was around how do we incentivize a circular economy for Bitcoin rather than people   buying and selling,   Bitcoin. They are earning and spending Bitcoin. What do you guys think about that?  

[00:05:39] Unknown:

I think about this a lot because we, you know, we did this thing in Austin. We I say we I went to this thing in Austin, this,   block party, which was about, you know, spending money at taco trucks,   which was really fun. It was fun to buy things for real with Bitcoin. I think of it as like rehearsal.   It is not really economically rational to spend Bitcoin   for for goods when you have   fiat in your bank account.   And I really like   saving things on, you know, if Bitcoin depends on us doing economically irrational things   for for Bitcoin to succeed, then Bitcoin will succeed. So I don't think Bitcoin needs us to do economically irrational things. But what is nice is   as someone who views themselves   as part of building Bitcoin, it is fun to practice the circular economy. So that's the way I normally frame it. Like, hey, let's have a good time. Let's larp a little bit. Do some circular economy. I'm not gonna do all my payments like this yet, but let's make sure these rails work and and that will, you know, help kick the tires. And so we're gonna be ready when we need it. But we don't need it at least in the US. So, it's not   rational to do it all the time.  



[00:06:53] Unknown:

Those are some interesting thoughts. I mean, I that gets flipped on its head if the majority of your   if your income and savings is in Bitcoin already. Right? Mhmm. But if you haven't hit that part, then people are inclined to spend Fiat first.  

[00:07:09] Unknown:

Tony, you have anything to add there? Yeah. I think I think Paul nailed it with at the very least, it's good practice to be able to know that we can do it when when we need to.   But then there you know, there's an avenue of,   you know, once we get these merchants and everything set up one time, like, you know, we go to Miami and we set up some merchants on Bitcoin there too, like, once a year,   and then we sort of sleep. And then they're, like, left with, like, a Bitcoin integration that, like, maybe nobody's using at all. And then it's like, well, that was a failed experiment. No one actually came back and started using Bitcoin. Yeah. And what if they end up with a bad taste in the mouth? Like, the next time someone like, maybe Bitcoin is ready for them next time around.  

[00:07:49] Unknown:

Maybe there's a good ton of customers all of a sudden, but they're like, oh, yeah. We tried Bitcoin before, and it, you know, it was total waste of our time and money. Like, if if if merchants have this vibe of like, hey, well, somebody really passionate is gonna come in, get us signed up, and then they're gonna bail on us And we'll just waste, you know, what a waste. I wouldn't wanna leave that, you know, bad bad impression. But if, hey, if you're gonna spend, you you know, 100 of dollars a month with that merchant, maybe they'll be be glad they did it. So, I mean, I have good news for you because it turns out that we are on YouTube right now. They were full of shit. Nice. So I still tried to stream there even though they told me I couldn't, and it worked. I'll try not to get  

[00:08:27] Unknown:

so if if you're a YouTube freak, and you prefer that,  

[00:08:30] Unknown:

you can, what's everybody's opinion on this? On YouTube.  

[00:08:34] Unknown:

Dude, fuck you, man.   I mean, YouTube can go fuck themselves. If we get banned, we get banned, whatever. That's why bitcointv.com   exists.   I I one thing I would add here. First of all, there's been a bunch of different dispatch episodes purely focused on   growing the circular economy. It's something that I've been very focused on lately,   really in-depth conversations. People should go check them out. But one thing we are missing it here is,   there is Oshi app now by our good friend, Michael Atwood,   and Oshi gives you stats back. So that can change, that calculation in your head, if you can get a decent amount of sats back by spending Bitcoin.   I also think,   that if if I mean, this conversation is about Lightning using Lightning privately. Right? So if there's a transaction that,   you know, you'd prefer not you know, if you're trying to get out of this surveillance state, right, where you're using credit cards,   or using payment apps on your phone or something,   and you want to start taking some of your privacy back,   there's a strong argument for using Bitcoin in payments,   if if you do understand the nuances of using it privately. But I would I mean, every transaction you make on a credit card or payment app is is tracked by default.  



[00:09:49] Unknown:

So   Right. And at least with I mean, we've gone over it many times, but at least spending on Lightning is has pretty good privacy. So you can comp you know, pretty competently   not screw up if you're if you're using lightning in that way. Yeah. I think,  

[00:10:04] Unknown:

as for meetup organizers, it seems like it was a meetup organizers question.   One of the things we do here with our community is we give them as many options as as possible to to spend with Bitcoin.   And, you know, they'll find their way eventually when they're ready to spend it, but put those options in front of them. Right? Like, we like, at the NASH Bitcoiners meetup that we're gonna have   on Wednesday,   you'll be able to buy coffee   from a nice local coffee purveyor with Bitcoin, and you'll be able to buy burgers from a local burger place, with Bitcoin.   And, you know, you'll also be able to pay Fiat if you wanna pay Fiat, but the both of those,   both of those small businesses   intend to hold their Bitcoin long term. They're trying to build a Bitcoin stack themselves, and and you can kind of incentivize that adoption by these local businesses by by going and spending with them.  



[00:10:58] Unknown:

Yeah. Speaking of Oshi,   Michael Oshi onboarded a coffee shop in Austin, and they do, like, I think, like, a weekly get together   there.   Was it the yeah. At the meteor Bitcoin breakfast. So, like, onboard   a Bitcoin business and then have your meetup at that business so that you create, like, the the regular thing so that it wasn't,  

[00:11:21] Unknown:

a waste of their that business's time. And they get to kind of DCA into it too. Right? Because, you know, the percentage of people coming in every day spending Bitcoin is not that much. So it's like they can hold that, you know, few percent,   of customer revenue coming in, and they don't have to worry about swings, you know, so they're still paying fiat bills with the other customers. So,   it it like, doing it consistently   and,   reliably and keep coming back, I I see a lot of value in that.  

[00:11:50] Unknown:

Fuck.   Yeah. Okay. So let's let's talk into let's jump into our main topic of conversation, and then we can weave and move around. And as always, freaks,   feel free to put your comments,   in the live chat. And, I actually part of the reason we had the technical difficulty before is I actually have a TV in here now   with the live chat up so both of our guests can see it, so I'm not a central point of failure on that. Shout out, weird robot,   his coworker. 1st weird robot's the first person to ever post a YouTube comment from the CIL dispatch YouTube. Wow.   That works. You'll never be you'll never be topped   weird weird robot. Would I call him wide robot? Wide robot.  

Sorry, freaks. It's been a long day. We're just getting everything ready over here. I just got a ton of people coming in.   So we're gonna be talking about using lightning privately.   I've had Tony on multiple times for this conversation.   You guys apparently he mentioned you in the last conversation, Paul. You guys are working on something called,   really great name, the Private Lightning Wallet.   You wanna go into, you know first of all, I guess, what was the,   like, why are are you working on this? Mhmm. And and then what does it provide us?  

[00:13:04] Unknown:

Yeah. Well, hit PLN, which stands for private lightning wallet.  

[00:13:09] Unknown:

The the the w is invisible. Oh, is it called private lightning network? Is that what it's called? I don't know. I think it is called Private Lightning Wallet, but it's also PLN. I think both are true. Why don't you just change it's not out yet. Why don't you just change it out to PLW? I do have the domainpln.gg  

[00:13:23] Unknown:

and it redirects  

[00:13:25] Unknown:

I think it's too late. It's too late. It's not a okay.  

[00:13:29] Unknown:

Got it. The n stands for wallet.  

[00:13:32] Unknown:

Tony and I   like, n stands for wallet. Yeah.   Tony and I like to do hack on, projects. We've been talking about,   what it would look like to make a wallet for a while.   And it's one of those things it's, you know, it's a big project. There's a lot to it, typically.   So,   it, you know, it's a it's a little intimidating. So it's it's it turns into being a really fun hackathon projects. It's like, yeah, let's waste some time. Let's do a thing we're not gonna do normally.   But when we sat down and, like, sketched out, what would it   do, I think it, like it felt like it just right in that moment, crystallized a lot of the things that we've been discussing   of of okay. There you know,   Tony obviously has written a lot and thought a lot about how to actually use   lightning   privately, and that's a there's a lot of knowledge there. And so, if you sit down at your terminal or however you currently operate Lightning,   and you try to have all the knowledge in your head   of how to use lightning privately, you you for for someone like me that struggles to hold all the all those facts, I'm gonna be stressed out. And so I want a piece of software that guides me along the happy path   of privately. That something that will, you know, be, like, you know, bumper bowling   where you can't really do it wrong.  

Like, privacy is is potentially the only By the way, bumper bowling is a share coin. Continue.  

[00:15:00] Unknown:

I mean, is it even bowling if you use bumpers?  

[00:15:03] Unknown:

What do you mean bumper bowl? It's for for the children.   Children need privacy too. I don't have what you care about giving back to the children.  

[00:15:11] Unknown:

Okay. I'm sorry. I derailed you. But Yeah. If if if,   if if you're an adult and you're going to a bowling alley and you have the bumpers down and you're bowling with bumpers,  

[00:15:21] Unknown:

reevaluate your life. Yeah. But think about who needs the bumpers. Right? Professionals. Right? They how many gutter balls are these a a professional   throw? Because they they don't need the bumpers to keep it on the lane. Right? Obviously.   But it it it in the little it's a little it's it's the people who aren't the professional.   Right? So, like, the solution to lightning privacy can't be let's all become professional bowlers. Right?  

[00:15:46] Unknown:

That means only professional bowlers are allowed to use. I'm just saying your analogy is shitty. I'm not saying that people don't need bumpers. Into it. Okay. Continue. If we all have to become lightning privacy experts to use lightning, then the only people using lightning privately will be the lightning privacy experts. Yeah. But in bowling, if if you get a gutter ball, like, you'll just lose a fun game of bowling. Yeah. But in if if you use money non, you know, and you leak a bunch of private data, then there's real world consequences for that. So it's a completely different situation. Unless unless a big part of your self identity is how good you are a bullet.  

[00:16:18] Unknown:

Yeah. And your self identity is fucked if you have bumpers on. I'm just saying Okay. So the idea is to lightning privacy isn't just education, it's also tools. It's a tool that helps you use something more privately. It guides you to use it correct. To use Lightning   in the ways that are private because there are there are different ways that you can do things on lightning. Some of them are more private than us. Okay. So how does it do that?   You can't receive.  

[00:16:43] Unknown:

No receiving. Only send. Only send. Okay. So we know if if you've been listening to dispatch for a while, you know that,   all things equal, it's way harder to use lightning privately   on the receive side than on the sent side. So you guys have just solved that by  

[00:17:00] Unknown:

disabling that option for now, presumably for now. So until you can safely enable it. Yeah. You the way you could the way you o the way you deposit money into this is you open a channel.   So so if you wanna add funds to this   specific lightning wallet,   you,   you   click deposit or I don't know what we'll call the button. Eventually, right now, it's,  

[00:17:23] Unknown:

just open channel. Yeah.  

[00:17:25] Unknown:

So you click the open channel button, and then what? It gives you an address? Yeah. You get an address.  

[00:17:30] Unknown:

You pay that from any Bitcoin wallet. Okay. And that creates a channel. And also, at the same time, spins up a new node for that channel. So every channel Is its own node. And PLN is its own node. Oh, that's cool. Right. Because, like, if you link up UTXOs on the same node Is this a phone wallet? Mhmm. It can yeah. It's capable of being a phone. It's processed. It's not first.   Wait. Oh, it's it's Flutter, so it runs on, like, desktop or mobile.  

[00:17:56] Unknown:

On both Android and iOS. Yeah. Mhmm.   Got it. So you load you load up you get an address. You load it up. Creates a new channel.   Fresh. Mhmm. And then if I if I press open another channel at that point and send more funds, and it's a new node, new channel Yep. Yep. All running  

[00:18:14] Unknown:

locally. And this is based on we a lot of this, we got for free because it's based on Sensei.   It's John Cottrell's product. Got it. So Which is based on LDK. Right. Which is based on LDK. And since it has this concept of a root node that does all, like, the hard like, the it's not the hardest work. It's just the work that require that the CPU   wise is the hard work of gossip.   What else? Got gossip and   is it mostly just gossip? I think it's gossip. Oh, creating, like, the network graph. Right? So talking to to peers and creating a network graph and and computing routes and stuff like that. That's the job of the root node. But then there's all these additional nodes, and all they are is just channel state. So they're really tiny and they're really lightweight to spin up   additional nodes in the sensei model.  



[00:19:00] Unknown:

And then what is I mean, you need, like, a Bitcoin node to back everything. What what are you using for that? It uses both,  

[00:19:07] Unknown:

Bitcoin and like, Bitcoin d and Electrum. So you can point it to your own Electrum server, if you have one.  

[00:19:14] Unknown:

So if you're running on mobile, that's probably what you're gonna have to do. Right? Right. And And then if you're running on your computer, you can just run a local   Bitcoin d and SIMs. Yeah.  

[00:19:23] Unknown:

Or you I mean, yeah, you pointed at,   Blockstream's Electrum if you wanted to give up on all the privacy. I   there there's an aspect of this where it's like when we're telling you no, there's there's there's times   when you want to allow the user to override that because they, they know better or they just have to get something done.   So I think we're that's kinda where we're at right now is thinking through the absolute best UX for that. And, like, what should we make an option? And what should we just completely disallow?   So for instance, with, you know, receives,   you know, potentially,   like or or what was it? Which for channel opens. Right?  

I think you guys talked on the last podcast about short channel IDs.  

[00:20:08] Unknown:

Yes.  

[00:20:09] Unknown:

So right now, the the the,   the your channel ID is leaking information   for for a private channel. Your private channel is findable   because of this channel ID is is derived deterministically.   So if now you have these short channel IDs that have no relation to on to chain state, that's more private. Right?   So,   potentially, we don't allow you to open a channel,   without this new,  

[00:20:40] Unknown:

short channel ID. Or we say, hey Specifically, that doesn't point to which UTXO's used to fund. Yeah. Right.  

[00:20:48] Unknown:

Or we say,   hey, it looks like the node you're trying to open to doesn't support this short channel IDs yet.   Here's a fall back.   You know, do do you do you wanna   do you wanna do the dangerous thing right now? And and   and maybe we allow that.  

[00:21:07] Unknown:

It's like the trade off between, like like, how how is the user a threat model? And, like, we we want to protect the user.   At the same time, they know better about their own situation too. So it's like, there's an instance where if, you know, I trust Paul to a certain degree,   and I may not care if I open a channel with Paul and it, like, leaks some UTXO information or or he knows some information about my note,   or the UTXO I used. So, you know, there's still an idea of, like, let me decide   to override the privacy options versus   this wallet trying to protect the user or not let them shoot themselves in the foot.  



[00:21:46] Unknown:

Yeah. Another another example is, let's say,   Tony and I have a channel, and I wanna pay Tony.   PLN should should notify me, like, hey. You're about to pay a direct channel partner. That means they're gonna associate your identity   with your node. Right? Because the payment is probably initiated out of band. Right? So, like, I'm buying a t shirt. So he knows I'm buying something,   and now he sees this incoming payment. So he's gonna associate these 2 facts.   So if it's if if   if if Tony is someone I I I view as a threat, I don't wanna associate those. So I'm like, oh, thanks for warning me. I'll find another route or maybe the wall will help somehow. I mean, that's   obviously, we haven't built that. But that's those are the sorts of things that we wanna think about. But maybe I could say, you know what? Tony's a bro. He knows I'm I'm, paying him in lightning right now. He already knows my note ID. He set it up for, I don't know, whatever it is. If I choose to trust him, then that, you know,   the fact that I'm leaking privacy in that moment is appropriate and fine.  



[00:22:50] Unknown:

But why not just use the   best practices?  

[00:22:55] Unknown:

There could be case so if, like, I literally have no other channels except one with Paul, then they would like, we would have to say you can't and this could be one of the options. It could say, like, we you can't make this payment to Paul right now because you don't have any other channels. And if you pay Paul, he knows that it couldn't have come from anyone else. Right. Because there's no hops. Because there's no hops. There is no public The direct payment. Direct payment.   One of the options could be, like, you can't pay Paul because your direct channels with him. Do you want the advanced scenarios? Like, do you want to open a channel with another node that's not Paul, and then you can pay him that way. So that could be one option. The other option is, like, well, do you trust Paul? If you trust Paul, then you can go ahead and make this payment. Otherwise, you're gonna leak the fact that you're gonna leak your note ID, and then you're gonna leak, like, some other information. But my point is, so that makes sense to me, but my point is why would you not use a short channel ID? Did I miss that? Not all nodes support it yet. Oh, okay. Right. So there's some compatibility. You try and open a channel with a certain node, you might not be able to use your channel ID. And is that that's based on implementation.   Yep. So I don't think l and d or c lightning  

[00:24:00] Unknown:

have added. Okay. So 99% of nodes do not support it yet. Yeah. But it So only LDK nodes  

[00:24:06] Unknown:

support it. In the in the payment case though That's a good reason.   Yeah. If in the payment case though, if we have a private channel between each other, we know that's short channel ID. Right? So in the payment case, they're still gonna be able to correlate it with me.   Right.  

[00:24:21] Unknown:

Alright. So as opposed If it's just a no hot payment case, you mean. Right. Right. Which that's kind of the trade off too. You want some plausible deniability that a payment didn't come from your node.   So that's why it's not ideal to, for 1, pay your channel partner, but for 2, you may want some channels to be public, so there's some plausible deniability, and you could say, oh, that payment didn't come from me. It got sourced behind me. Just just as like a meta comment on that, there's a way of thinking of lightning privacy as basically  

[00:24:51] Unknown:

how large can I make obviously, anything with privacy? It's about the anonymity set. So like how many plausible other   nodes could have originated this payment?   Right. So, if if if that gets narrowed down to 2 or one, that's, you know Pretty bad. That's when you have trouble. So so whatever actions you're doing for lightning privacy, whatever that means in this that scenario is usually trying to expand   the number of plausible  

[00:25:17] Unknown:

nodes that could have sent that. One one great example of this too, just to simple simplify it. If you're like a Breeze Wallet user   and you're paying another Breeze Wallet user   and Breeze is your LSP,   Breeze pretty much knows that,   where the source of the payment came from and where the destination is because both of those parties   do not typically have public channels with anyone else.   So the only possible people that could have paid this person or routed through to this person   is this specific sender and then that we know that's that specific receiver. So but especially if you're a mobile user and you're paying another mobile user of the same app,   they pretty much know. Like, the person sitting in the middle pretty much knows   who's paying who, and that's a pretty big privacy concern I think people aren't aware of either.  



[00:26:06] Unknown:

And how do how do you guys gonna get around that?  

[00:26:09] Unknown:

Well, we won't be a breeze.   You know, we we have our own law.   Well, for 1, we're not sitting in the middle. So we're not an LSP. Right.   And we won't be a node that, like, people connect to at all. Like, it it'll But if people, like, open private  

[00:26:24] Unknown:

lightning   wallet,   I was just the n stands for wallet. People open private lightning wallet, and then they they create a   channel   to Breeze   or one of the large routing nodes, like, async or something,   there's a good chance that that they'll be the only hop. Right. So one possibility  

[00:26:46] Unknown:

that we've explored is the fact that we won't   we give a warning if the user wants to open a channel with kind of a hub,  

[00:26:55] Unknown:

and we can just base it on how many channels do they have that are public channels, and we just say, okay. Well, it's not recommended to open a channel with Breeze. What about, like, pathfinding? Do you intentionally add hops? Like, a lot of pathfinding is based on the lowest fee, which actually is probably detrimental Yes. To your privacy because lowest fee usually means less hops.  

[00:27:14] Unknown:

But if you intent you can can you intentionally add hops in? Yeah. Absolutely. And that's that's one of the things that we we will add. So, like, we're we're still developing this as well, and that's not a feature we currently have, but that's one that we want. So you add hops,   and you can add as many as you want, really. You're just there's a little bit of a cost to how private you wanna be, so a little bit of a trade off. You're gonna be paying a higher fee, but you're gonna have increased privacy.   And I think that's a great trade off.  

Because the fee shouldn't be that much higher. It shouldn't be in most cases. I mean, if you're doing a large payment,   the percentages  

[00:27:49] Unknown:

could start adding up. As a reminder, lightning payments, unlike on chain payments,   are the fee is based on the amount you send. It's, basically, a percentage fee on the amount you send. So the more you send, the higher the fee. On chain   without with on chain, though, the difference is you pay on the the size of the transaction. So it doesn't matter how much money you're sending.   It matters essentially   all all sequel matters how many inputs you have on the input side of the transaction. Yeah. The actual amount of data rather than the amount of money.  

[00:28:20] Unknown:

Right.   And the other I mean, the other problem with adding hops is obviously the reliability.   Like, the odds of a payment going through diminish rapidly every hop you add. Yeah. I was on the,  

[00:28:33] Unknown:

lightning payments panel in Miami,   and,   I believe it was Rockstar who was talking about   how after one hop, your payment reliability goes down to, like, 70 to 80%.   And then after that, it just gets worse and worse and worse. So there's also a little bit trade off. If you're wanting instant payments to always succeed,   you're gonna want the shortest route, which is there's privacy concerns with that. But if you're adding hops or privacy concerns, you may be sitting there at the cash register for a little while,   you know, trying multiple paths and trying to do longer paths to make sure it works. So there's even an option for, like, us to have an option where it's, like, oh, it's taking a while to make this payment.  

Do you want to, like, bump down on the privacy   to have this payment go through? Like, if you're purchasing just like a sandwich at a shop,   you know, you may not care about the most perfect privacy.   So there's use cases allowing the user to override and say, I'm not trying to be the most private in this scenario   could add to the reliability, but then, you know, where do you draw that line? We don't want everyone just to use the least private option all the time.   So there's a battle between UX   and not letting users   shoot themselves in the foot.  



[00:29:47] Unknown:

Yeah. That makes sense to me. So so where what's what's the current state? Can people test this out right now?  

[00:29:53] Unknown:

Yeah. They can test it out. I I wouldn't suggest it just yet just because it's still,   a proof of concept. We started it a few weeks ago at a hackathon. We spent good 48 hours on it, and then a few weekends after   so we're we're still in the development phase of it. We're gonna come out with an MVP   soon. We've narrowed down,   the list. It'll just be something simple,   open channel, and send.   And so for sending wallet, it'll be great. You'll have a lot of privacy features built into it. And we're gonna start out with that little MVP.   So hopefully,   I don't know,   a month or 2. I it's 2 weeks. 2 weeks. 2 weeks? Okay. 2 weeks, we'll have this ready. But,  

[00:30:31] Unknown:

we're hoping to be able to get it out fast just because it really just does 2 things. One one open question. I'd like some feedback. There's a couple of ways you can run this. You could run it, like, have have, like, a daemon, like, like, the nodes running on an Umbrel   or on a cloud host or something, or on your desktop or whatever. And your your   mobile device will communicate back to that. Obviously, that's simple. If you're just running it on your desktop or something like that,   that's pretty easy to launch.   It since it's lightweight enough,   that, basically, we could run all this on a phone.  

Like, all the nodes are all running on your phone. So, obviously, they're just offline whenever you the apps I mean, if you're just using for sending, that's fine. You're just sending. You're not routing anything. So perhaps that's just that's totally fine. So I'd be curious   of if people who are interested   in using this wallet, how many of them would be willing to run something   on Umbrel,  

[00:31:29] Unknown:

or Like a Raspberry blades or something? Yeah. Whatever. Or Voltage. What or  

[00:31:34] Unknown:

I don't know voltage.  

[00:31:36] Unknown:

Paul works for voltage, by the way. I'll work on that. I'll get that going real quick. It's it's it's like whether or not you go the Zeus approach or you go, like, the Breeze approach or the Moon approach,  

[00:31:46] Unknown:

m u u n Right. And what people prefer. And we can actually do both. Theoretically, yeah, we can totally do both. There's potential even to be able to kinda, like, migrate channels   from one spot to another.  

[00:31:57] Unknown:

But as far as what to prioritize first out of But, presumably, like, to run it on one of these node   boxes or voltage or something, you need LDK support first? Well, no. It is l d LDK. Yeah. So They just they they run arbitrary binaries   and LDK. So you just package LDK with the app or whatever. Mhmm. It's packaged inside of Sensei, which we package  

[00:32:18] Unknown:

inside of our app. So But in a sense, we quote with real big square quotes, we built the whole note software. We're packaging an entire   node software. You don't need some external nodes. Got it. So, presumably, you can just get that added to RaspiBlitz or something. Right. RaspiBlitz doesn't have to support LDK separately. Correct. Just just like any app you add to one of those node node run. What's cool is that,  

[00:32:43] Unknown:

Sensei is also a node,   in and of itself. So you can take Sensei and throw it on a rasp Raspberry Pi or or a server somewhere, your own computer, your laptop.   But then you can also take Sensei and use it as a library, which I think it's it's huge to be able to do that. The way John Cantrell is building it is it's fantastic to be able to support. Like, the only reason we were able to do this so quickly is because John Cantrell had been working on Sensei for a while,   and he built it in a way that supports being a library and as a node itself. So we're we're we're kind of on the backs of giants here taking some of John Cantrell's MIT  

[00:33:18] Unknown:

legacy. I mean, because, I mean, John Contrell is, like, he's doing such amazing work and he comes to this conference and he, like, gives this very detailed talk about how LDK is built.   And he really he he or sorry. Not l he also explained a lot about LDK, but he how sense is built. And he kinda had a call to action   of, like, hey, build some stuff for the hackathon. I talked to him, like, hey, I think I'm gonna build this for the hackathon.   Get a, like, a, like, maybe a better onboarding   flow for Sensei.   And then I just like, no. Actually, I'll just use your library   and make my own wallet.  

Fuck you, John.  

[00:33:54] Unknown:

Well, it's actually beautiful to see. Back on the aspect of, like, you could throw this on the Raspberry Pi. There's a lot of features that I think we can add to that require an always online node, like, you know, actively coin joining in the background and things like that,   that you would probably want to throw as an always online node. But, it'd be cool to be able support the move mobile use case. Just get rid of certain features if you're using it like a a moon or a breeze. Yeah. Like, if you think what is that root, Also, what is that root node doing with, like, building that, you know, having that, up to date channel  

[00:34:27] Unknown:

graph   is is pretty pretty valuable. If you have to every time you open up the phone, it has to, like,   talk to a bunch of peers and do a ton of gossip to get anything like a realistic   perspective on what's happening in lightning, like, that's just bad bad UX. So, ideally, you do have the root node running all And I guess, like, if you don't have a watchtower,  

[00:34:46] Unknown:

you you want those channel if you're not online, your channels can  

[00:34:50] Unknown:

you you can get attacked by your peers. Right? You just you have to have some alert to, like, open your app  

[00:34:55] Unknown:

every 2 2 weeks, basically, as far as I understand. Right? Right. But, alternatively, if you have it running 247, you'd have to deal with that. And you could have a watch tower, but you would probably want it to be your own watch tower, especially if you're trying to be private.  

[00:35:09] Unknown:

This is a good one, Tony. Whirlpool integration would be sick.  

[00:35:13] Unknown:

Yeah. It would be. And there's an avenue where it could be doing whirlpools in the background with your coins that are just on chain   and not locked in the channel already.   And there's some possibilities there where you could,   be doing coin joins while you're still locked in a channel, which I think is,   a brilliant use case. You could be always splicing in or splicing out into coin joints.  

[00:35:40] Unknown:

So it seems like you're describing what Ben de Carmen and Satrinity are talking about in the comments Right. Which is this project Vortex. You guys are are working on that as well. Right?  

[00:35:51] Unknown:

We've been we've been talking with Ben a lot on how to integrate this and,   be able to use something like this.   Vortex will kinda do your channel opens are collaborative   and your, your channel closes. You can't do those collaboratively yet, but,   you know, you could be even coin joining after you your channel is closed,   and then your channel opens your coin join. But there's even an aspect we've been talking to Ben about too where, you know, maybe in theory, once we get splicing in and splicing out,   those have no downtime at all, when you're splicing in and out. So you could have a channel,   the UTXO that's locked in the channel with your channel partner. You're using it to send payments, receive payments.  

And then in the background,   it is actively   participating in coin joint transactions with 0 downtime to you.   You would want those to be unannounced channels,   so you're not just broadcasting each channel open and channel close,   because you want those kind of unlinked.   But it'd be cool. You could have unannounced channels behind your public   channels. So I have a channel with Paul   that's public. You can route you can gain rounded fees from that. And then behind it, I have multiple   unannounced channels with Paul, and those are also participating   in the routing.  

They're adding to the liquidity without anyone else in the world knowing   because those are unannounced channels.   And in fact, we talked last week about, the hidden lightning network and probing for unannounced channels.   Those are the kind of channels that I can't probe. So I don't think we talked about that, but I can't actually find the UTXO behind   for a channel that's unannounced that's behind a public channel with the same peer.  

[00:37:31] Unknown:

Where you have 2 channels to the same peer, one's unannounced, one's One's public. I can't find the unannounced. Because it just automatically the probe goes through the Right. It always goes through a 100% of the time. Well, if there's balance.   Because So could you fill up that  

[00:37:45] Unknown:

chat because you you could fill up the public channel and then it would go into the private now? Right. But I wouldn't be able to find the UTXO back in it. It would just, like, either I could tell if there was an unannounced channel behind it,   but I would not be able to tell what UTXO makes it up. But that's that,   but in either case, you could be you it'd be cool to have   some unannounced channels   that are adding to your liquidity without anyone else in the world knowing,   and you're constantly coin joining those unannounced channels.  

[00:38:16] Unknown:

Did did does that all make sense? I I I think it kinda makes sense to me, but I I I wanted to take it another direction as well, but I don't I make sure we, like Well, first of all, I want I want the freaks to know in classic dispatch fashion.  

[00:38:29] Unknown:

Sometimes we go heavy technical. Sometimes it's easier to understand. I don't want you to be scared off. The  

[00:38:36] Unknown:

okay. So there's there's,   another idea. You know, how we have all these the PLN has all these channels,   or all these nodes   that are separate,   you know, per channel.   What if you have a larger payment?   Can you combine   those nodes   together?   Like, in a sense, you could think of, like, 3 nodes   combining to make a payment as, like,   you can make it look like you're halfway through, like, an amp payment, basically. Right? Like you're, you you know, an amp payment, like, splits goes through multiple routes simultaneously.   Now you you present yourself as you are those 3 multiple routes all of a sudden, but you're actually those are the 3 originating nodes. So you could you you could have a combined balance even though you have individual  

[00:39:32] Unknown:

5 Three nodes are making a payment or 4 nodes all in PLN.   Yep. And it helps on You really need to fix it shouldn't be PLN unless you wanna call it, like, private lightning network wallet.  

[00:39:43] Unknown:

Okay. Well, I also have storm wallet on net. That's just it's just private lightning.   With an n at the end. It's private lightning. Oh, private l n. L n. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Private lightning. Yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Sorry. Engineers are bad at naming things. But I will say before we move off   the topic vortex, which is really cool, hop on to,   Stefan Lovera and listen to the recent I don't know what number it is. Sorry, Stefan. But, Ben Carman probably knows. He's in the comments.   Ben was just on to talk about privacy stuff, Fortex stuff. So if you wanna learn more about Fortex and You just search Ben Carmen. Ben Carmen.  

Yeah. I mean, PLNW   could work too.  

[00:40:23] Unknown:

391. Episode 391. And, also, I mean, if you go back to the open source stage talks,   in the SIL dispatch feed, they are time stamped. There's both Tony Tony talked twice. I had him on stage twice for that. Back to back? One for lightning payments and one for lightning privacy.   Also, still dispatch 21. We go for, like, 2 and a half hours on all the nuances of lightning privacy. That's aged pretty well. Not a lot of them have been.   They're pretty much still all outstanding for the most part.   Yep. So so we're talking about 2 things here that I think make it a little bit more confusing. We're talking about   this vortex wallet,   which I are you you're contributing to that as well. Right? Not yet. No.  



[00:41:05] Unknown:

I'm I'm just been I think Paul is.  

[00:41:07] Unknown:

Been in a Figma   I've I've helped a little bit with the design for a front end. But And then we're talking about PLN with 2 so 2 different wallets we're talking about. That's why I'm I'm sorry. I like a little   put in a little p n PLN fact,   But that that's a distraction from from Vortex.   But,   I did wanna shout out,   we're starting Austin Bitcoin Design Club.   And a part of it was a little inspired by Vortex of, like, Vortex is an open source project   It didn't have a front end. Somebody,   oh,   somebody's working on the front end for it, needed some design,   Like, got a few people together,   like, created a Figma and, like, came up with an aesthetic and did some design for it. So I I really wanted to,   connect with the design community to better and or or basically find open source projects   that   want design.  

And I think the biggest, the bigger problem, like developers know that they can go around on GitHub and if they see something interesting, they can create an issue or create a poll request or, you know, hit up you know, like, developers know how to contribute to code projects,   help designers know how to  

[00:42:24] Unknown:

contribute to products. So when is the first Austin Bitcoin Design Club happening? July 27th. July 27th at Bitcoin Commons.   Yep. Awesome. Good shout out. So Trinity is asking, Tony, would the node software for PLN have a feature to block you jamming channels?  

[00:42:41] Unknown:

Channel jamming is kind of an unsolved problem,   so I would easy answer is   no.   But,   you know, if we were to able able to get unannounced channels   and,   short channel ID aliases,   that would help the channel jamming,   problem a lot. So,   it's not it's not a perfect fix, but,  

[00:43:08] Unknown:

and presumably, like, if every channel open in PLN   is a different node. Right. Then all of a sudden, like, an attacker needs to know all of your nodes and   discover those channel all of those channels and then jam each one individually rather than, like, one public node, and they're, like, I'm just gonna channel it.   I'm just gonna jam every channel. Right? So if I design it,   it's resistant at least. Exactly. Because, it's resistant to probing, and it's resistant  

[00:43:34] Unknown:

to jamming because there's so many different there's, like, basically a bunch of disposable nodes. Yep. And if you're a node and you only have unannounced channels,   you've never leaked your pub key to the gossip network, so you can't search it on 1 ml. You can't go through a list of net like, you could try to channel jam, people randomly, but they would never be able to find your public key,   unless you leaked it out, like, on Twitter or something. But then Post an invoice publicly. Right. But then that's just one of your nodes. If you have multiple channels, you have multiple nodes, and they can't channel, jam them all if you didn't link them all. But you won't be posting an invoice anytime soon on PLN because No. You can't receive. So No. Received. Yeah. So we're waiting on,   what's blinded routes, blinded paths,   which is kind of been paper clip to bolt 12. So when we start getting that support and LDK,   we can actually and the cool thing is, like, you know,   LDK is working on so many different cool features,   and one of them is 1212. And as far as I know, LND is not working on it. So we don't have to wait for LND to get this. Like, once LDK works on some of these features, we can have that in Sensei, and then we can have that   in PLN without waiting on lnd or c lightning to do it. So,   I think that's a pretty pretty cool,  

[00:44:50] Unknown:

use of LDK. But if someone's paying you, they need   LDK  

[00:44:55] Unknown:

to use blinded products. Need, Yeah. They need that's true. They need a node that supports it, so I I take that back. So you're completely wrong on that last statement. But you could use PLN to pay PLN, and that would be no private. PLN can't receive.   No. Once we add blind pass.  

[00:45:10] Unknown:

Right.  

[00:45:11] Unknown:

Fair enough. Okay. Shout out to  

[00:45:14] Unknown:

Ewriggs. Ewriggs is doing the front end report. He's in the comments right now on Twitch.   Awesome.   Before we go move on to another topic, first of all,   Paul, welcome to Bitcoin Park. What do you what you think of Bitcoin Park so far? You've been working here all day. It's beautiful. I like this the soundproofness.  

[00:45:33] Unknown:

I've produced   several,   music albums since I've been here.  

[00:45:39] Unknown:

Multiple podcasts too. This is, like, your 5th today. Right? 5th podcast. No. I've done a lot of singing.  

[00:45:44] Unknown:

Paul's,   some freaks might not know, but Paul is a prolific,   prolific podcaster. He was one of the founders of of the Vergecast.   Just one of, like, the first tech podcasts.   Let's see. So you've been in a lot of studios. I've been. This is a pretty nice studio. Right? This is a very nice studio, actually. Yeah. Like, the last place I  

[00:46:06] Unknown:

I was doing, like, professional podcast from was just,   like, a room that had been   mostly   converted into a professional podcast studio. So you think this is, like, a step above that? Step above because this is, like, a real this is designed, like, as, like, a music. It has a lot more sound treatment   than the average  

[00:46:24] Unknown:

Yeah. Because they recorded music in here, not podcasts. Yeah. Exactly.   Like, you heard it here first, Freaks. It's endorsement by Paul Miller himself. All this stuff. All this stuff.   So what do you guys wanna talk about?  

[00:46:39] Unknown:

I don't know. I don't know.   Paul,   you're you you've been,   you haven't been on here in a while. I think the last time you were on Citadel Dispatch, we were in Miami.   You were talking about abolishing  

[00:46:52] Unknown:

FAA with Yeah. 8 k. And really poor sound quality. Now he's got really nice sound quality.  

[00:46:57] Unknown:

I stand by everything I said against the FAA FAA.  

[00:47:01] Unknown:

What do you think about,   Tony's belief that people under 10 should not be allowed to drive?  

[00:47:09] Unknown:

I   hard disagree.   And, I think, I think Tony should be not allowed to say something like that. I think if if you say something like that, you should be deplatformed.  

[00:47:22] Unknown:

Wow. I Hot take of the week. I am deplatforming.  

[00:47:26] Unknown:

I'm not on Twitter. Not on any of us. I can't say these things. I love it when kids drive. I'm a big fan of child labor.   All about,   deregulation.  

[00:47:40] Unknown:

You know, after we talked about that on stream and I got caught off guard with that question about what regulations   would I support,   I think the word I was looking for were,   certifications,   not regulation.   Like, the enforcement of it, I would not stand by that. But that's So what do you see as the difference between certification  

[00:48:01] Unknown:

and,   regulation? By the way, Weird Robot's calling someone a bigot in the comments. I don't know if he's calling Paul or Tony a biggie. Yeah. That's probably Paul.  

[00:48:10] Unknown:

We're we have this there's like this with food.   Like food is highly regulated. Right?   But what I would, what I care more about is, is things that aren't like expressed in the regulation. Like, I care, like, where it came from,   which isn't printed on a package. So you can get a stamp.   So it's abiding by a regulation.   But I know there are other things that I would rather be captured. But anyways, so the USDA  

[00:48:39] Unknown:

could be   difference.   Opt in. You're you're you're letting USDA say, I certify that these are following my rule set,   but people could sell non USDA   meat if they wanted to. That's their prerogative. Yep. Exactly.  

[00:48:56] Unknown:

And I guess USDA is probably not a good example. It'd be more like an independent body or something. Yeah. And I think in Texas and probably other states as well, you can have you can choose between USDA  

[00:49:07] Unknown:

and your state's,   certification too. So,   whatever they're I forget what that regulation is. But But I guess to keep it  

[00:49:16] Unknown:

on brand for dispatch,   it would be   it would be like if if you could opt in to the beef initiative saying, this is where the beef came from. And the beef initiative is not a government entity.   They're just putting their reputation on the line and saying,   we know you trust us, so we're gonna let you know that it came from this ranch and it went through this process or something. Right?  

[00:49:38] Unknown:

Yeah. I I'm I'm obsessed with the concept of trust right now. I'm thinking   a a a lot about this. And, like, basically, it it will   you're always gonna end up having trust in a system. So it's like you just wanna be, like, good at it. So, like,   it turns out that, like, blindly trusting,   that that, like, we   if you walk into a grocery store, you have this example, like, if you're gonna buy a tent. Right? You're gonna go online and, like, do all this, like, investigation   and comparison shopping and, like, read a bunch of reviews and, like or, you know, maybe you have a trusted source. Like, I really like Wirecutter. Right? Wirecutter, if I'm gonna buy a certain Is Wirecutter affiliated with The Verge?   No. They I think the New York Times owns them. Okay.  

My favorite publication, The New York Times.  

[00:50:27] Unknown:

So the Wirecutter will, like You're on the record saying a lot of controversial things right now. So Do, How do you feel about China? I love China.  

[00:50:35] Unknown:

Wirecutter will   do these, like, comparisons of, like, mattresses   or something like that. Right? They'll, like, get a bunch of mattresses in and then compare them and write these in-depth reviews about them. Right? So I'm gonna trust them and offload   this decision   of what the best one is there. But, like, how often do you do that for when you are in, like, a on a grocery store aisle?   Like, you're comparing based on, like, the branding, and you're you're basically assuming everything is blessed   by our regulators. So you are you're placing an implicit trust in the grocery store and all the and the FDA   that everything in front of you is in some sense safe. But or in in like the the the food pyramid. You're, like, believing the food pyramid.  

But it so, in fact, you you you are using a lot of trust. It's just misplaced trust. And so   we we need to to   hopefully dial down the places where we just   blindly trust, like fiat trust, and   instead   choose very carefully  

[00:51:35] Unknown:

who we trust. I think, pins, BTC pins in   by the way, shout out BTC pins. He's still selling,   dispatch magnets.   So if you want a dispatch magnet, you can go to sill dispatch.com/stack,   and that supports him, that supports the show, and it supports open sets.   He's saying voluntary is the key, and I think   that's kind of   a lot you know, you guys are kinda doing the long winded version of of that. Right? Absolutely.   Like, that nails it that nails it down. Bunch of different certification  

[00:52:08] Unknown:

possibilities or something like that. Right. And even let the grocery store themselves   too pick and choose what they wanna sell. It may not be   regulated by the FDA or not, but you can have trust in your own. Like, you're a grocery store owner, Paul. Right? You own a grocery store. You literally do. And I shop it all the time, and I trust that the food I'm not checking certification, but I trust that Paul's grocery store is not selling me something bad. Because he's in my local community, and I may I may hurt him if he tries to sell Paul has a grocery store? Yeah. He does in Austin.  

[00:52:39] Unknown:

I'm a I co own a grocery store.  

[00:52:42] Unknown:

Can you can you tell us more about this? It's a co op.  

[00:52:45] Unknown:

Oh. Yeah.   But they ask you when I check out, are you an owner owner here? And I say, yes. Oh, and I say, yeah. My name is Paul Miller. And it turns out this whole time, he gets receipts sent to his email. So he goes through and he he gets a receipt   randomly in the mail in the email. And he sees all the items that I typically buy, and he's like, oh, busted.   That was you using using my, privacy expert. Yeah. Tony Georgiou.  

[00:53:12] Unknown:

So so so the guy you're working on a privacy wallet with is is actively snooping on your on your grocery purchases.  

[00:53:19] Unknown:

Yeah. Well, I'm actively using his name instead of my name, so it's what I get. There you go. Trade offs. But, I I mean, to go back to the trust in Wheatsville, say you are an owner, then your name is Paul Miller.   It's it's going back to the aspect of trust and even bringing back enlightening privacy too. There's also sometimes trusting people, not with your security or or your health, but trusting them with your privacy too, which I think is an interesting aspect. You don't wanna we you know, the first reaction you may have is I don't wanna trust someone else or rely on them for my own privacy. Right? Like, that seems like a given. Right?   Except there when you are   hiding amongst the an onset of other users,   you are literally trusting them with your privacy.  

If every single one of their users,   the users that you're hiding in the anon set with,   let's say that's actually chain surveillance or that's the government. Like, every one of those users   are not and and then they publicize that information or,   or they see your transaction and they know it's not them, so they can kinda reduce your add on set that way. You are like, when you do a coin join,   even lightning itself,   you're trusting that it's not owned.   Like, that process is not owned by   a single actor. You trust that everyone you're collaborating with is not a single actor.   Well, you don't have to trust that, but if if if,  

[00:54:47] Unknown:

you kinda are. Yeah. Well, the the so in in   Nick Szabo's trusted third parties are security holes.   He he has kind of a a section in there where he says, you know, trust is actually kinda like a funny word.   Some privacy,   and security   researchers think that maybe a better term is vulnerable to.   So you what what you are vulnerable to is is the scenario that you're   or or or if if all these people were bad, you you are vulnerable to. You're trusting that they're not bad is a sense of not that you trust that they're all good guys, but you you are vulnerable   to the fact that if they were all against you, you're screwed.  



[00:55:29] Unknown:

Yep. And that's true with collaborative transactions, and I think that's true true with the Lightning Network too. You're trusting that or you're vulnerable to the Lightning Network,   either not being owned by the same actor or I I think there was someone in Twitter today that, responded to you.   You're trusting that they're not selling   their transaction history,   on the free markets because you could if if there was a market for selling   transaction history on lightning,   and there's an aggregator of all this transaction history   that is purchasing   other people's transaction history because, like, some nodes   literally don't make that much on lightning. Like,   Alex Bosworth may make, you know, 1,000,000 of dollars a year routing lightning payments, but, like, the reality of the situation, like, we the rest of us aren't or most of us aren't. And he doesn't make 1,000,000, but it's like that. You know, I think 1,000   a month.  

But there is this aspect if the entire Lightning Network is owned or they are incentivized to sell transaction history,   and they do so, that hurts your privacy by a lot.   Because if you could dynamize   lightning,   it's just like the Tor network being owned by the NSA. If every single node on Tor was the NSA, you're fucked.  

[00:56:46] Unknown:

Mhmm. So let's I mean, you you talked about a lot of things there.   Let's start with the question that you mentioned that was on   that was on Twitter by atmetis   galactic.   He goes, can you please discuss the possibility of l n node operators selling transaction data   and that being more profitable than transaction fees?  

[00:57:10] Unknown:

Yeah. If   if  

[00:57:13] Unknown:

I mean, one   problem with Lightning Network right now is all HTLCs   have the same hash. So if you are multiple nodes   on the lightning network and you see   a payment come in with a certain hash and it comes in one node and that's your node and then it leaves your node. But then, like, a few seconds later, it comes into a different node, and you can see the hash. You see it's the same one. You can start doing some   to kinda figure out,   where that payment came from and where it's going. And in theory, if you're every single one of the nodes in the path You're you control multiple of the hops. Multiple of the hops. You see where it's going and and you see where it came from,   and you have pretty good analysis. And you can even start doing routing,   deanonymizing   the routing that they took, the pathing that they took, You do all kinds of analytics on that. But if if every single   node were publicizing   the payments that were coming in and leaving or they were selling it to a single actor,   that would be terrible for privacy.  

And in theory,   chain analytics, a multibillion   dollar company,   could actually   create a market where they're asking people to sell transaction data. How valuable  

[00:58:28] Unknown:

is,   the timeliness   of that data   from a chain analytics perspective. Like like, if if this, you know, this new alternative business model of selling  

[00:58:40] Unknown:

Well, it's not that it's not that crazy of a business model because, I mean, in the in the current tech world, I mean, there's   a meme. It's not really a meme. Like, data is the new oil. Right? Like, all the major tech companies You are the product. Are pretty much they monetize the data. That's that's their business model. Right? They give you a product for free, and then they monetize the data. So it's it's an established business model   potentially moved over to lightning.   I mean, I would say my simple monkey brain had, without getting, like, super technical,   I mean, this is the main reason why we need   independent   Sovereign Bitcoiners, basically, running routing nodes over tour rather than just having, like, a few large companies   running the major routing nodes.  

I have, like, no reason to,   no reason to think   that that guy, 0 fee routing, is a malicious actor.   Right? But he offers   0 fee routing. And if you're on if you're the if he's the only node you're connected to and he's one hop away from everyone else, then presumably,   he doesn't even need to control other hops. Right? He could   surveil you. Right.  

[00:59:47] Unknown:

If he's the only one, and then it's going to a destination,  

[00:59:50] Unknown:

or that's the only one, he could surveil you. It could also be multiple nodes on the network too. So so from, like, a fee before we drag 0 fees name to the the the alt the other business model here is selling liquidity. Which is what his official business model is, and he's making he seems to be making bank on that. Yes. Which is why there's no reason to It doesn't have to necessarily be.  

[01:00:12] Unknown:

But there's an argument from   yeah. I was not trying to drag his name to the I'm just clarifying. Yeah.   And it but this is good because Paul's so far defended New York Times, China,   Kyle Lager,   and and 0 fee routing. So you're in good company, 0 fee routing. 0 fee routing implicitly.   But you're vulnerable to 0 fee routing in that situation. Exactly. And just to use your words. It's a group. And but so there's an argument from a user point of view.   Tell me if I'm wrong here. If you wanna distill it down to an easy digestible   2 liner.  

If you if if your main incentive is to have the lowest fees,   there's a strong argument to open to a very large public routing node.   If if your if your goal is better privacy,   you're better off with smaller   routing nodes that are ideally Tor only.  

[01:01:07] Unknown:

Correct.   And and ideally also ones that either don't have an alias   or, you know, you don't know who actually owns them because there is an aspect of,   and some people   suggest this sometimes.   If if if you have a payment come in or you're being probed   or someone's trying to DDoS your channels or something like that, you could ask your channel partner.   Hey, all these payments are coming in from your node. It might not be you or I've had a channel with you forever. I don't think you're actually randomly deciding to probe me. So where are you getting this spam from?   And then you check, oh, it's from Matt's notes. So you ask Matt's. So there's this way to anonymize   onion routing by literally just asking your channel partner, where is this coming from? Then they ask their channel partner, where is this coming from? And eventually, you can try to figure out who is actually if you if you know everyone in that path or you have access to talk to them,   you could even send them like a lightning payment with a with a message in it.  

You can   without even doing surveillance or without even doing active attacks or probing yourself.   So you are vulnerable to everyone in the path, not colluding  

[01:02:24] Unknown:

to deanonymize your payments. But if you have one good hop in there, you're good.  

[01:02:28] Unknown:

If you have one hop in there that doesn't collude, you're good. It's at least better since we still have the same pay until we have PTLCs, we're gonna be we're gonna be,   vulnerable   to the payment hash being the same. I could go on Twitter, and I say, well, I don't know my channel partner. I'm trying to ask him where this payment is coming from. He's not responding.   Twitter,   does anyone have this payment hash in your transaction list? I'm trying to figure out where it came from. And then so you skip the hop that's being good by not actively de anonymizing you, but you found you went you found the pop before him,   because you went on Twitter and you colluded  

[01:03:05] Unknown:

with the other actor. And if that person replying to you on Twitter, it doesn't mean they were malicious even. They're not just   not know that that's a problem. So you, you know, you're vulnerable to not just people who are malicious towards you, but also people just making mistakes with And then, presumably, if you wanna talk  

[01:03:23] Unknown:

about state actors or something, you're also you're relying on the security of those routing nodes not getting compromised. Right? True.  

[01:03:30] Unknown:

Especially if they're running on, like, AWS or something like that. Or or a single party that has every other run a node on AWS.  

[01:03:38] Unknown:

It would do something like that.  

[01:03:41] Unknown:

I don't know, Paul. Who would?  

[01:03:44] Unknown:

Well,   just use voltage.   Voltage uses AWS, doesn't it? It really depends on your threat model.   You know, if you're a merchant trying to receive or if you're a routing node,   you know, you you,   you care much less that,   well, especially when you're a routing node.   Think of why do we have all these routing nodes on the network that are, like, these huge deals and we don't even know who's running them?   Because if they're not initiating   sends and receives,   you can act   surprisingly anonymously   as just A routing node. As just as a node. Especially a TOR only node.   Oh, yeah.  



[01:04:30] Unknown:

Because if you're not running a Tor only node, you're   you're obviously broadcasting your IP address.   But, like, someone like Ellen Bigg, I mean, all of his IP addresses are a single   server farm in   Virginia.   Doesn't mean he's from Virginia,   but it's hard to buy a server privately.  

[01:04:48] Unknown:

Right. Like, if there was a reason to get a court order against the   computer hosting that IP   or that ISP   where that IP came from,   there could be a court order. So a nation state could figure it out   even if we can't, by just the IP address. We at least know it's in Virginia somewhere.  

[01:05:08] Unknown:

What,   so we have ride or die freak alternative way in the matrix chat saying each time there's privacy discussion on CD, I think that Bitcoin and privacy is a lost cause, sweaty face.   What do you say to him?  

[01:05:23] Unknown:

I'm sorry. Mhmm.   I'm I I'm not   There's a fine line between, like, educating   and being doom and gloom. And,   you know, people need to be educated that,   it's not perfect, and there's a lot of holes   in lightning privacy and Bitcoin privacy as well.   It's not a lost cause.   You know, we I like to tow the line between breaking privacy and fixing privacy.   Breaking privacy to educate people that it is kind of broken and you need to be careful, but then also trying to   educate and make it better at the same time. So the reason,   you know, I do this is is is so we can get privacy to be better. Well, to to fix problems, you have to be aware of the problems first. Yeah.  



[01:06:12] Unknown:

Right? And and you need to have educated stakeholders.   Otherwise, nothing will ever get fixed.   It's definitely not a lost cause. If it was a lost cause, we wouldn't be having the conversation. I wouldn't be here. Yeah.  

[01:06:25] Unknown:

So,   keep your keep your head up.  

[01:06:28] Unknown:

I hear there's a privacy lightning wallet that will make it easy for you. And the other way I think about this stuff a lot of times is is,   the the dollar cost averaging model. Like, you don't wanna, like, necessarily ape into,   privacy in the sense of   don't do it in such a way that you get burned out or discouraged   or, you know, you, like,   do how much you feel, like,   psychically you can afford   on a on any given day. Like, I I'm not recommending this as a privacy thing, but I did this for my own sanity as I got sick of,   Calix,   OS. And I just got tired of being, an Android user and it was pain in the ass And I did not I wasn't enjoying it psychically.  

And so I I switched to an iPhone. And I'm not that I I think graphy and Calix are are vastly   better   choices, but I wasn't enjoying the trade off of the amount of time and effort I was spending,   and and the user experience.   And so I was like, you know what? I want to do that. I admire people that do do it, but I don't wanna be I don't want that to be my focus right now. I have other things I'm focused on being good at and and achieving right now.  

[01:07:47] Unknown:

But you didn't necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater on that. You're just like, okay. So this one step, I'm gonna step back on. Mhmm.   Yeah. This convenience privacy trade off, I I don't like. Right. It's counter   it's counterproductive for myself, but I'm still gonna focus on improving other aspects of my life.   And I'm not gonna get discouraged about it. Right?   Feel like that's a good analogy.  

[01:08:11] Unknown:

And then and then but you are educated   as well on the topic, and you know the trade offs, and you know   when when you would use it maybe in the future Mhmm. Versus what you're sacrificing right now.   So it's it's cons, it's going into your threat modeling in in the back of your head.  

[01:08:32] Unknown:

Fuck. Yeah.   Do you guys have anything else you wanna talk about? I know, Tony, when you said when we when we finished up yesterday, you said you had a lot more privacy lightning conversation you wanna have. Do you think we we nailed it all? Or  

[01:08:48] Unknown:

Yeah. I thought, you know, all that PLN stuff.   You know, Paul and I and and and Ben Carmen and a few other people also got, like, a grant to work on lightning privacy stuff too. So it's it's really cool to be able to,   we've been going through it for about 2 months or so. And what does that look like? Yeah. So it's, like, 1.1   Bitcoin split amongst,   a few people, and it's basic right now, it's   weekly meetings   talking about we we try to hone in to a specific topic of lightning every single time we meet up,   and we'll hone in, like one time we had TBAS on and and we focused on trampoline routing and how we can improve privacy by utilizing trampoline.  

Soon, we'll be we'll we'll have someone talk about splicing. We'll have someone talk about,   bolt 12 and and and route finding, and and we're gonna go through that. We're still going through it, but then come up with,   what a lightning privacy wallet could look like with, like, backed research and analysis on all these topics. So we're not just,   we're not we're not just, like, aping into, like, new Lightning wallets. We're actually trying to also leverage   the research,   and the studying that we've been doing over months and trying to come up with,  

[01:10:00] Unknown:

you know, the way that they're doing that. So that's great. What's the goal of the project?  

[01:10:04] Unknown:

The goal of the project that or at least with this grant is designing a privacy focused lightning wallet.  

[01:10:10] Unknown:

That is not vortex or PLN or Correct. It's not it's not And now the 3rd wallet has entered the arena.  

[01:10:17] Unknown:

It's research about what a lightning wallet  

[01:10:20] Unknown:

could look like a private So presumably PLN or vortex could implement them. Right. One of the things we were talking about,   today actually with with PLN was was, you know, you can think of some of these things as like a decision tree. Like, the the the user tries to do this.   Is this super private of an action to do? Like, you know, the example of trying to pay a direct channel peer,   Or do we wanna warn them about that? How dangerous is that? You know? Are they willing to embrace that danger or do they wanna try an alternate route? Like, you know, how else can we pay this person? Well, another route is to,   create a new channel, maybe create a channel with a a well connected hub. Well, there's privacy trade offs there.  

So, you know, it so, like, there there's a tree of decisions to make so we can do that research and and and write that down. And then, also, hopefully,  

[01:11:12] Unknown:

PLN can become a reflection of a decision tree like that. Right. So we're not actually gonna implement a wallet as part of this grant.   It's mostly just designing what it would look like, and, you know, we're kind of at the same time. Sounds like easy money. It sounds like you guys are just talking about what you enjoy talking about already, and you just got a grant for it. I mean, isn't that what it's all about? Right? Getting   getting paid to do what you believe in, what you care about,   day to day.  

[01:11:37] Unknown:

You heard it here first, Freaks. Everybody's a scammer.  

[01:11:41] Unknown:

Well, do you want lightning privacy to be better or not? You you know, I mean, I can try to do it all for free.   But it's nice to have a little back pocket money. And if I wanna do it anyways,  

[01:11:52] Unknown:

might as well get a little Bitcoin to do it. So we have alternative way again in the matrix chat saying, what shall one do when his IP address leaks? I have an easy answer for this. First of all,   go on DuckDuckGo or whatever your favorite search engine is and type and change my I my IP address and then the ISP name, whether that's, like, Verizon or Comcast or whatever, they'll usually be someone else who has had to do that in the past.   I remember at my last apartment with Fios, like, you did something with the   you you did something with, like, unplugging your Ethernet, and then you just, like, turned it off for a while, and then the network gives you a new I s a new IP address. Sometimes it's a little bit more complicated.  

The burn it all down approach is you just   cancel that Internet provider, and you get a new Internet provider. You get a new You move to a new new IP address. Yeah. You can also move.   That that's an option. I don't know how actionable that is. It. Hacker bags move away. But I think of I think I, like, turned off my my Internet for, like, 3 hours or something. And then when I turned it back on, I got a new IP address.  

[01:12:59] Unknown:

One thing to note with lightning nodes,   if you do change your like, if you start out with an IP address and then you later change it, you get rid of that on your node and you go Tor only.   That gossip   that you broadcasted your IP address, that is, like, stays there forever. And Right. They still know that previous IP address. Right. Every node knows that you just switched from an IP address to a Tor address Right. And have that previous IP address. Like, with my node, I  

[01:13:25] Unknown:

I switched to Tor only, and then I switched my IP address.   And then there was a freak that reached out to me. He's like, Matt, I think I found a vulnerability in Tor. Like, I discovered your IP address. I was like, no. That's just the old one that it was it was publicly gossiping on. Right. 1 ML keeps track of it. I believe Amboss keeps track of it too. You got Ben Carmen in the chat. You can use a VPN too. Yeah. If you've already leaked your IP address, then  

[01:13:50] Unknown:

go ahead and move.  

[01:13:52] Unknown:

But, yeah, if if you use a VPN, it's it's you're using a trusted entity a hosted VPN, you're using a trusted entity   like Mullvad   or IVPN.   And then and, basically, they know your IP address, but the rest of the world sees the shared IP address that's provided to you by the VPN provider,   which is why VPNs are useful tool, especially if you   don't provide personal information and   you pay privately with Bitcoin.  

[01:14:21] Unknown:

Yeah. So that's on the VPN chuck talk. I, What about the Bob in the chat, another coworker. Shut up, Bob.  

[01:14:30] Unknown:

More people should run Tor nodes. We don't push that enough. Tor only. Well, all the node boxes by default are Tor only, which I think was in the beginning of lightning, everyone was running clear net. Tor node as in, like   Oh, run a separate tour relay note.   Fucking Rod leaves the studio and just leaves the door propped open, so we don't have soundproofing.  

[01:14:49] Unknown:

But I think he means,   a Tor node as, like, an actual Tor implementation.  

[01:14:55] Unknown:

Like, like, not just a Tor only lightning node, but, like, a Tor Relay node for traffic. Like, would you think that should become, like, part of the I I it   it bothers me that we have this such a outsized dependency on something that's, like, not This tourist coin?   I don't know.   It it's not it's clearly not   I mean, lightning actually has these problems as well.   Not necessarily   designed   to be,   spam tolerant.  

[01:15:24] Unknown:

Yeah. Tourism at all. They they literally just have a centralized  

[01:15:28] Unknown:

blacklist. It's how they handle it. You know? So, like, Bitcoin obviously thought very deeply   about how to solve these problems, and   other projects don't I mean, it's it's   other projects by virtue of not being   the one money  

[01:15:44] Unknown:

don't get some of Bitcoin solves for some of these things. I think a lot of the if you look down the tour for our model, like, they basically, the threat model is the US government will not actively attack it.  

[01:15:54] Unknown:

Vulnerable to  

[01:15:57] Unknown:

Yeah. And I think they're even trying to implement proof of work stuff into the tour now.  

[01:16:01] Unknown:

Like, you have to do a little bit of proof of work to, like But it's not. They've been talking about that for a little bit, but it's not integrated. No. And I think,  

[01:16:09] Unknown:

you know, I wanna try to see if I can I know there's been some I two p work on Bitcoin? I don't exactly know how   I two p works, but you can have that as another option now. There's, like, probably 2 I two p nodes. Bitcoin nodes big like, John Attack and Corolla or the 2 running. Is, like, a lot like tour, but without, like, the exit node aspect.  

[01:16:28] Unknown:

Like, think of, like, just trying to it's not trying to have exit nodes out into the clear net. It's just for the in between traffic,   which is  

[01:16:37] Unknown:

that sounds well suited to lightning. But But, anyway, what Bob's saying is more people should run tour relay nodes.   Presumably, don't run an exit node unless you understand the ramifications of that because   exit node traffic is associated with you, but it could be anybody   going through tour.   But relay nodes don't have that issue  

[01:16:59] Unknown:

because they stay within the Tor network. Yeah. I mean, it's more robust. Which is why I like the idea I 2 p. So it'd be cool to see,   some I two p work on the lightning network as well so you can have an option that's not tor.   That way when tor goes down as it does a lot,  

[01:17:17] Unknown:

you have another kind of anonymous option. And another thing you kinda ran into with Tor is sometimes it's hard to tell with Tor   what the problem is. You know?   Like, you don't quite know why something failed.   Right? Like like, it was in clear net Internet, you get, like, an error from back from the server.   Like, you just couldn't couldn't connect. Like, Tor doesn't  

[01:17:43] Unknown:

it it's not obvious why something didn't go through. Or, like, if it yeah. If it if it's slow, it never hits the destination or something like that.   Yeah. Because, on when I was doing some of those lightning probe and stuff, it was hard to tell   why some payments would get stuck or be slower. They're unreliable. Is it because it's slow on lightning? Is it because the tour network's slow?   I know every time, you know, some some people say this about Zeus. I love Zeus. Evan is doing a fantastic job on it. One thing that he'll get, like, support tickets on, they open up their Tor only lightning network node and even has a Tor only address to interact with it.   So people open up Zeus, and they try to access their note at home. And it's it fails a lot sometimes because it's going through Tor only.  

And, you know, sometimes you'll get support tickets where it's like, well, why is this slow? You know, Zeus keeps failing. It's like, it's not it's not me, guys. It's like, literally, Tor. And we're building Tor potentially into, like, the UX  

[01:18:44] Unknown:

of, like, how I buy my coffee.   Like, what if I you know, like Oh, then we go to 711,  

[01:18:51] Unknown:

and we we we try to pay an invoice with, oh, look how fast Tor was. That wasn't that fast. That demo   Jack Mallers did where he, like, pulls out his node. He pulls out his phone. He's like, oh, I just paid for Coke at 7:11.   Via tour. Yeah. Lighting network. I was like, I've never seen for work that fast in my fucking life.  

[01:19:09] Unknown:

And and, you know, tour adds latency for communication.   And then, what if, you know, now,   what if you're making longer routes?   I one potential way,   to use lightning is to   involve slowing down lightning, basically. Like, you know, longer longer routes are gonna be a lot slower because you need all of this But then you get more privacy. Essentially, you get more privacy. But if you think of lightning is is the coffee solves the the coffee problem of Bitcoin,   you know, if it doesn't solve it well,   we're gonna have to we're gonna have to, either improve it or we'll have to have another layer to solve coffee. So do you think if someone goes to a coffee shop and buys  

[01:19:57] Unknown:

their coffee let's say the coffee shop is using an an Ivex pay terminal and they pay with strike,   are they using Bitcoin?   With Ibex, can you, like, choose for it to go to your node instead of just them? No. But I'mx Ibex has a no k y c version that just collapses all the payments to an on chain address at the end of the day. Pay with strike  

[01:20:23] Unknown:

to Ibex? Yeah. They're using They're using Bitcoin? Mhmm.  

[01:20:27] Unknown:

Okay. I mean, in one way, at least Strike and Ibex are using Bitcoin between each. But is the person using Bitcoin?   You know,   like, Coinbase is technically, like, a layer on top of Bitcoin, you can argue. So it's like   they're not using Bitcoin directly. They're using Bitcoin between 2 untrusted parties. Right. You know, strike doesn't trust ibex, and ibex doesn't trust Stripe. Although, they probably have a channel between But the user and the merchant are trusting both. Right. Or they're vulnerable to both.   Yeah. I mean, they're vulnerable. Well, the merchant's vulnerable to Ibex, and then the user is vulnerable to Stripe. And they're both vulnerable to each for their privacy.  

True. Yeah. I mean, they could collude.  

[01:21:07] Unknown:

So we have just I'm jumping all over the place. We have n d blind dog on Twitter. He he put in his   topics for discussion, tour, tail scale, and LN Connect.   LN Connect kind of solves this Zeus tour issue we were talking about. Right? Exactly.  

[01:21:24] Unknown:

And, again, shout out to Evan. He's not only doing a lot of work on the Zeus side, but a lot of work on the Allen Connect side.   So Allen Connect is this idea that,   you,   it kinda uses,   I I don't know the exact type behind it, but some relay. So you can have your lightning network   not exposed,   via you don't have to, like, do port forwarding or anything like that. It'll be a Tor only node, but you can  

[01:21:51] Unknown:

still connect to it behind firewalls and stuff easier without having to go through that headache. You're not relying on Tor for the connection. Right? It's using the it's using the internal lightning network for the connection.  

[01:22:02] Unknown:

No. It's just using IP No. For the connection. Oh. That's a that's a  

[01:22:07] Unknown:

j b 55 project. But William Yeah. That's a different kind   of lightning connection.  

[01:22:14] Unknown:

They're both is that the same thing? Of I thought they were both or I thought Isn't that what we're talking about? Lightning Labs and Evan is on connect. Right. And so what is Will working on? Connect, which is like a like a proxy  

[01:22:27] Unknown:

like, what what Tony was describing. Let me, William's got a thing. What is it called?   I think it's socket.  

[01:22:34] Unknown:

Socket.  

[01:22:35] Unknown:

And that's internal to lightning network. He uses the actual lightning network to send the messages to to his node. But if he's use if if if Tor is being used by the lightning networks between them, then you're not only going through Tor, but you're also going through lighting networks that are going through Tor.  

[01:22:52] Unknown:

So that would probably be even slower. Well, we've had Will on the show before. We were talking about It's really cool. And his project, Domus, but we didn't talk about this. So maybe   you need to get him on dispatch sometime soon. Yeah. Because I need to explain it to me, actually.   Cool.   So, Freaks, first of all, like, if you have any questions for these great guests,   once again, feel free to put them in the comments.  

[01:23:16] Unknown:

The the the guy also mentioned a Tailscale.  

[01:23:19] Unknown:

Well, Tailscale's like a VPN, like an open source  

[01:23:22] Unknown:

VPN. How does I know. Tailscale work? So the the main thing that I think of it, what if I'm controlling my node,   I know my IP address. Right?   So it is not,   in some sense,   if if my phone is talking to my home node, right, it is not a leak to,   myself what my IP address is. Right? Right.  

[01:23:46] Unknown:

So the the security implication there is that I'm leaking to my phone, what my IP home IP address is, like, in some sense Well, I think and and that reason the reason Tor is used for that connection to phone back to your home node has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with   configuring ports on your router and stuff is pain in the ass. So if you just do Tor, you don't have to deal with that work forwarding  

[01:24:10] Unknown:

issue. Way of of solving that as well where you can kind of it it makes it seem to your device as if they are on the same network, and now they can talk. It is a different way of overcoming that hump. And then you don't have to there's no trusted third party in that issue in that situation, or is it There's a little bit of a trusted third party. The Tailscale tries to set it, turn it into a peer to peer connection, but, yeah, that you you would be trusting them with your IP addresses.   But you're not trusting them with all of your light they don't see all of your lightning traffic. I mean, it's similar to kind of the trade off with Ellen connect, where you are allowing somebody to be a proxy between 2 of your devices.   And and the traffic is obviously encrypted, so they don't see the traffic. But they do see that traffic is happening between 2 points. Alright. So if you don't want anybody to know that you have a lightning node and that you communicate to it from this specific device,   then these are not good solutions for that. But if you are fine with that trade off, which I think personally I am,   then,  

[01:25:13] Unknown:

Tailscale or Allen Connect could be really good solution. And there's two points there. Sometimes depending on the network configurations as you're using Allen Connect or things like it,   there's a mode where they can tell 2 points, handshake, and then they take it   They don't see that there's traffic between them. But then if there's, like, heavy firewalls and things in place between the home network and the the other points,   they then they see that traffic is actively happening between 2 points, but they don't.   But then there's also a mode where they just see 2 points, handshake,   but then they don't see that traffic if actively flowing. So Allen Connect also has,   that aspect, and,   I don't think it's I don't even think Lightning Labs is hosting their   own proxy service for these. I think they're utilizing   the ones that already exist on the network.  



[01:26:02] Unknown:

You can actually run your own version Right. Of their proxy server.   So, obviously, they don't it's not exactly a proxy server. That's a loose term. But Yep. You can run your own one. So you don't just have to trust Lightning Labs for this.  

[01:26:16] Unknown:

Cool.   Alternative way, ask another question.   What if Lightning payments required a minimum number of hops for privacy?   I mean, we kinda talked about that already.   I think if that happened, you'd it'd basically be on the wallet level. Right? Not on the protocol level. Yeah. You couldn't enforce that on the protocol level, really. But,  

[01:26:34] Unknown:

and then on the wallet level,   it is   better. For privacy. Want to do for privacy.   It does not make privacy bulletproof   for many other reasons like correlation   for   timing analysis for HCLC   hash analysis for amount analysis.  

[01:26:52] Unknown:

But it's an improvement. It comes with trade offs in terms of payment reliability and fees. Yep. Boom. It's better.   For privacy.   So I have a question for Paul. Paul,   this is my own question, not from the audience.   You've been working at Voltage for a while. Voltage makes it really easy for people to run,   lightning node, through your service that's in a trust minimized way.   What have you guys learned over at Voltage in terms of, you know, making Lightning easier? Like, what do you how do you guys think about Lightning? Or how do you think about Lightning?  

[01:27:26] Unknown:

Yeah. The the fun thing I learned   at Voltage, it's sort of this,   there's this interesting,   like,   usability slider with all things. So like the the magic   special sauce of voltage. Voltage is non custodial   cloud hosting.   So which sounds like pretty ridiculous.   And so what's the   trust model, the vulnerability   there   is that the way the way we pull this off is that we   encrypt in the front end, which is what I work on, so I hope I'm doing a good job. The in the front end, we encrypt the macaroon.   So when you you fire up the the the lightning node, you're you're and then we put your the front end in direct contact with the lightning node.   And   that is where the front end generates the the node generates the wall, it gets the the admin macaroon,   and encrypts that and then sends it back to voltage encrypted to that password. So we we only store an encrypted   copy and we don't have the power   to direct your notes. So we can turn your note off. We could delete all your data. We could delete the encrypted macaroon,   but we we don't have the decryption key. We don't have the password that decrypts that macaroon. Therefore,   we, in fact, can't   move the money. Now the vulnerability there, the trust there, is that you're trusting that we haven't   secretly forked our copy of LND or did something else in the back end   that, we actually do end up with some sort of decrypted MAC group. But if you if you if you trust us to do that, we in fact and we've in fact haven't done that. So therefore, we can't move your money around. So that's the trust model. And, also, the key thing is you're trusting basically  

[01:29:21] Unknown:

with uptime.   I mean, because you could do, like, you could just delete all the data or just not have the note online. Right. Yeah. We could we could turn it off for the Yeah. For sure.  

[01:29:33] Unknown:

So   so the the upside you get for that is the is I think the big thing is is reliability   and and and the findability.   Like, we're talking about a lot of, like, privacy stuff, but for,   a merchant,   or for a routing node, or for for somebody who wants a node that is very easy to connect to,   and visible   on the Lightning Network.   And, also, is easy to work for with from a developer perspective.   Like, we haven't talked much about this, but if you're you're making an app on top of lightning,   that app needs to communicate   with with you like like, let's say you're making an app that accepts payments. Right?  

You you want the you want the the app to do to show when the payment goes through.   So that app needs to be talking to the node like, hey, did you see this payment go through? I showed the invoice to the user, but I was and so there there's that communication. Right? So how does your app communicate to the to to the node? That's another thing that the that that having, like, the this sort of cloud hosting thing instead of something that is hosted at home.   I mean, as a developer,   I don't talk to my home node from the apps that I make. Right. I I think LNC   Lightning node connect is actually a really interesting way to potentially do that. And I'm actually looking into that because I think there's some really there's some cool potential there.  

So anyways, what we end up with, though, at Voltage is there's a trade off slider. You know, there are custodial lightning solutions   that   that just take a fee or,   that it's it's possible to make   a lot easier   in experiences   on top of.   So we basically   we offload a lot of challenge   and difficulty to the user in order to achieve,   this this,   non custodial binding. And so I think that's it it it's I think it's a challenge that I think every Bitcoin company ultimately ends up with is do we compromise,   like,   the properties of Bitcoin   in order to achieve a user UX?  

Or do we kinda stay true to the properties of Bitcoin   and and   and have something that's harder to use, but in some sense is built for the longer run.   So it's kind of like a high time preference, low time preference. But the other aspect of that is   there are things that are hard to do, but can be made easier   without compromising,   the Bitcoin Ethos. And those are, to me, like, the most exciting And what is the Bitcoin Ethos to you?   It's the the the non   it non sensibility.   It it's sort of the the ability to to use money without permission.   So, obviously, privacy becomes a big part of that,   because   to tell you no, they need to know if. Right? So that's why privacy is interesting.  

But, yeah, it's it's sort of it's using money,   in a permissionless way. So,   you know, putting a node on a on on,   AWS   that Jeff Bezos shut down   is not   entirely permissionless money. Right. And so it is not,   completely cypherpunk.  

[01:33:12] Unknown:

But I do think It's not purely the Bitcoin Ethos, but it takes a trade off balance. It's yeah. It takes a trade off  

[01:33:19] Unknown:

to in order to get the yes. The some of the reliability   and performance   that you would want in a real, you know, buying coffee situation or if you're building an app on top of   lightning that you you need performance, you need   you want something enterprise grade that you have confidence in the uptime and in the latency  

[01:33:41] Unknown:

and in the performance of. So I think, like, if you wanna use a real time a real example,   would be, like, the Canadian Truckers.   So the Canadian Truckers,   used an app called,   Tali coin   created by DJ Booth. Awesome dude.   They reused an address for on chain payments, so there's no privacy there.   The Lightning node they used was they connected an already existing Lightning node, and it was,   our boy, Ben Sessions,   Lightning node.   And as as a result, there was   obvious actors that could be pressured Mhmm. For that fundraiser, and the Canadian government pressured them and got them to hand over a bunch of the Bitcoin, and they were tracking all the on chain Bitcoin. So those are all   still being tracked to this day.  

If that fundraiser   had been done by NIMS   and they used a voltage node without KYC,   it wouldn't have been purely permissionless, but it would have been a massive step   forward in censorship resistance. Right. It wouldn't have been a perfect situation,   but it would have been a significant it would have been a significant improvement there because they would have been using a BTC pay instance. They would have been using a fresh node. They wouldn't have been reusing addresses,   and we go through all that in detail on still dispatch 57   that Tony was a part of. But I feel like that's a that's a pretty good example of   of where Voltage sits in that trade off model. And, obviously, in that situation, it was in a a proper adversarial environment.  

If you're talking about, like, a merchant receiving payments,   they can use something like Ibex, where they're trusting their privacy to Ibex,   or they can use Voltage,   not do k y c,   not reuse addresses,   hold their own keys. The on chain portion, literally, you don't even there's even less trust on the on chain portion with something like Voltage   because you can use it. You can be holding your keys offline and just have a x pub connected.  

[01:35:51] Unknown:

Yeah. And we have, you know, we have some pretty interesting thing with,   Flow, which is a a wrapper for for Lightning Labs pool.   Basically, we have, like, a pool account on your behalf.   One of the cool things privacy wise is if you want inbound liquidity,   you can or even outbound liquidity, you can pay out of band   for a channel open on flow,   which is a is a pretty nice setup. It's not there there are a lot of different interesting emerging ways. Because, again, we're   especially interested in in, like, the merchant use case. Right? Where you're gonna have a lot of inbound. Like, if you think of why is a company spending money   to run a lightning node? It might be because they wanna earn some Bitcoin.  

So you wanna have inbound. And so that's something that we think a lot about is   and I again, you asked, like, what are some thoughts from working at voltage? Like, a lot of the aspect is   a lot of people   know what lightning is in a pretty,   I'd say, limited sense. And and you and and so they like know that they need a node and they fire up a node, but what's step 2 is actually very challenging. And so that's, to me, there it it's actually a really exciting opportunity. There is so much UX improvement I can do before I say like, hey, I need a 3 d scan of your face or something, you know? Like, there's just like, how do I help people,   you know, get liquidity to their node?  

How do I help them easily build apps on top of,   you know, like, you know, you know, how do I,   enable developers and users   to effectively use this? I think there's so much we can build to improve   the experience   without   at all impacting like this this custodial aspect.   And I'm sure there are custodial   ish trade offs that we can make as well, but I I'm not thinking much about that right now.  

[01:37:42] Unknown:

Awesome. Well, we appreciate that insight.   Guys, I mean, this is an hour and 40 minutes so far. I think it's been a great conversation.   We have gotten really technical,   which I love. It's good it's good to to dive deep, and and some things will be over some of our heads.   But that's how we learn through through osmosis and pushing ourselves.   I imagine   this next week of dispatch will include heavy technical conversation and more accessible conversation.   You guys are familiar with a lot of the people that are coming in.   We have a massive crew coming in. I'm curious,   I'm both curious, and also it takes a little bit of effort off of my plate. What kind of conversations do you wanna see on dispatch over this next week?  



[01:38:32] Unknown:

That's a good question.  

[01:38:38] Unknown:

I don't know. I don't know. What do you think, Paul? Should be a 7 hour debate about,   tail,  

[01:38:45] Unknown:

what's it called? Tail not a Tail emissions, isn't it? Is it tail emissions?  

[01:38:50] Unknown:

No. I mean, that debate can just be summed up by   if if you wanna add inflation to Bitcoin, just fork Bitcoin and add add add inflation and see what the fuck happens. I like the,  

[01:39:00] Unknown:

look at junior's   thought where,   you,   if you had infinite,   divisibility   in Bitcoin,   we don't ever have to stop the   the the block reward. It just gets smaller and smaller forever.   Casino's   paradox.  

[01:39:21] Unknown:

Wait. Wait. Can you repeat that again? If you had infinite divisibility. So the reason  

[01:39:26] Unknown:

Right. I get it. Because it it keeps having, and then eventually It's an integer. Right? Bitcoin is based on integers. So it's an integer number of sats, and half of one sat is in integer terms is is 0. Right? So if we if we increase the divisibility  

[01:39:41] Unknown:

rather than what is it currently? It's it's 100,000,000 sets. Right. But right. It's, how many decimal points? It's 8?   I think 8. Or is it 8 or 9? One of those. One of those. Okay. A 100,000,000 sets, but if you went deeper than sets, like, millisats Yeah. Or something. Yeah. So, like, or, like, every time yeah. Every time you ran out of  

[01:40:00] Unknown:

of integers Then it would have to infinity. You'd get another then, yeah, you keep you could keep block rewards forever,   but not you're not   adding any more Bitcoin.   Other you are adding a small   view.   It is inflationary   over the current cap because you are adding a small fraction of, of what Satoshi  

[01:40:23] Unknown:

to the current Well known limit of Bitcoin. It's definitely an added nuance to the debate. Maybe I gave you guys too loaded of a question. Rather than what conversations   Carmen about Vortex for sure. Okay. So Carmen Wanna learn about it. And he talked on What what other guests do you wanna see on dispatch? Who do you which people should be at the stable talking on dispatch? I wanna see Carmen talk about chain analysis.  

[01:40:47] Unknown:

Okay. That's a hot topic. Yeah. I absolutely wanna he talks a little bit about Stefano Bara. I wanted to dig into that. Change surveillance. Change surveillance. Use the proper terminology. Right.   I wanna see that and then also the trade offs of working   at a custodian or   a place needing to implement something like that. Because Carbon's building the Bitcoin company right now. Which   you never know if they need to add that in the future or not. So, like, what are the trade offs there? Would he really quit,  

[01:41:14] Unknown:

if they added it? You know, things like that. We don't need them to answer that. Yeah. They can just we can see if he quits when they add it.  

[01:41:22] Unknown:

That would be a good one to talk about. Maybe we just do a 24 hour stream,  

[01:41:27] Unknown:

24 7. Tele telethon style? Yeah. Telethon style. We never stop. So Trinity, I would love to have Ergo on. He's not gonna be here this week.   Ergo had Ergo was on one of the first episodes, which I was pretty proud of.   Who else do you wanna see on dispatch this week?  

[01:41:43] Unknown:

Ty for sure. Ty needs to be on every single one.  

[01:41:46] Unknown:

That'd be great. Carmen wants to know how did he become  

[01:41:50] Unknown:

the chain analysis guy? Well, he literally said he would die on that hill, so, let's let's talk about that. Yeah. Tony's dying on the dead hills, so you guys can share hills. Yeah. No more talk about dibs.  

[01:42:02] Unknown:

Oh, I'm curious about that, Paul. What's your opinion on dibs?  

[01:42:05] Unknown:

I'm a no stur maximalist.   So So there's 2 there's actually 2 two angles on this. You could easily implement no stir over dits,   and you could also do something   like dids over no stir. So, like, I there there are,  

[01:42:23] Unknown:

there's synergies there. Right. I've always wanted to explore more deeply about how that could be done,   but I I believe it can be done,   in both the ways you described. So I don't see it as a mutually exclusive   thing, although sometimes it feels like that's the argument.   But,   yeah, I don't wanna talk about this anymore.  

[01:42:44] Unknown:

So Trinity just said he discovered the first no stratumize.  

[01:42:47] Unknown:

I do. I I mean,   I know Tony doesn't wanna die on this hill, so he doesn't he's not getting pushed back on me. But I do think dibs are trying to do a lot. They're trying to do a lot through sort of, like, standard consensus   building mechanisms of, like, the web,   which is, you know, is fraught, full of probably a bunch of commies.   And, Nostar is this, like, wild west of, like, what if we did the simplest   possible thing?   And it's like a total it's kind of a hack. It's like,   there's it just there's something kind of conceptually pure about,   doing something that is very, very, very, very simple and limited.  

And then building in a sense, all the functionality and those those are happened   layer 2 because the the layer one   spec of Gnosters is so minimal.   And I I think there's just something very exciting about that. And I I also think there's a lot of dev   hype about Nostra because you can get it in, like, you know, 5 seconds and, like and you can start building on top of it really quickly because there's so little to   in the base layer to to implement.   So I think that's why it's just so fun to think about and be like, oh, if there was just   relays and messages   and public keys,   and then I could do anything else on top of that. It's just really fun to think about. I just wanted to say that, you know, I had JB 55 on  

[01:44:15] Unknown:

dispatch   to talk about Noister. There's a whole episode dedicated to it. I'm not Stefan, so I don't remember   the number.   But he's building this app, Domus, on top of Noister. Minute.  

[01:44:27] Unknown:

What'd you say? I'm on the test flight.  

[01:44:30] Unknown:

Yeah. But   I he never made this clear, and I didn't realize this to the other day when we were drinking   that it's it's named because Nostradamus,   which   is extremely clever. It's, like, one of the better names in Bitcoin,  

[01:44:43] Unknown:

So he he deserves some props for that. I didn't pick up on that until someone in in Domus.   It's pretty clever. Weeded it out. I don't know what the the verb in is.  

[01:44:54] Unknown:

They it? They deemed it or something. I don't know. He hadn't gotten that far. He didn't think about that one.   Anyway, guys, this is great.   You really did not help me out with with choosing guests. You just said Carmen and Ty. Yeah. Hey. What more do you need? Yeah. I mean, both of them will be on on the show. I already promised you Paul, and he's here right now.   We might get a press and pitch appearance. That would be fun. I'm trying to also not docs who's gonna be in town at the same time. True. We shouldn't idea. We shouldn't, like, pre docs them. Tony and I were thinking of forking Citadel Dispatch and starting a new podcast called Citadel Dispatch.   Well, see, I don't believe in state violence. So, like, I you you're welcome to do that. We're gonna do it upstairs in the other room that's also soundproofed.  

Oh, let's talk about that real quick before we end. Let's talk about the license on, PLN.  

[01:45:47] Unknown:

Paul, you added that. Right? The Tony license.  

[01:45:50] Unknown:

The bless this mess license.  

[01:45:52] Unknown:

What what what was the thought process on your license?   Your your your open source license. Yeah. I believe   we me and Ben and you were on Citadel dispatch. I don't know what number. We like to we like arguing about open source licenses for this batch. About that. Favorite topics.  

[01:46:09] Unknown:

It's it's heavily so, Paul, do you have it pulled up by chance? Yeah. Yeah. It's so Read it. May you do good and not evil.  

[01:46:18] Unknown:

May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.   May you share freely,   never taking more than you give.   Assume nothing works, and you may be pleasantly surprised.   And when it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. And I wanna add, less dismiss, but this it's a hot hot lead to the Yeah. I don't know about that. But so it's it's heavily stem  

[01:46:40] Unknown:

it's heavily stemmed off of SQ   SQLite,   the database tool open source database tool, for SQL. And and so   3 fourths of it is based on that. And then,   I added that last sentence,   based on someone else's   topic of of open source licenses. So, I stole all that   from others. Without credit. Without credit. Not giving any credit for it. But that's that's the whole idea of it is like I   personally, my perspective on it, I hate all the legal texts that's out there.   We're supposed to be cypherpunks. We're supposed to be like, to me, once you publish code, it's out there. Who the fuck should care what happens next? You just put something on the Internet.   It's available. It's out there. Information wants to be free. I'm not gonna add legal texts. I'm not gonna add paragraphs and paragraphs of something that MIT came up with with their lawyers.  

This is literally code. Use it. Don't use it. I'm not gonna sue you.   Do whatever you want with it. I'm not gonna do give you legal speech.   I mean, the key here is if you don't put a license, it just defaults to completely restricted. Right? So you need to put something. That's what people say. I I my first preference was to not put anything at all, and if you didn't wanna use it because you were afraid of state violence, then don't fucking use it.   But this was kind of a compromise to that. I'm literally telling you, you   know, use it,   whatever.  

And if you   still don't like it, then,   I don't know, don't use it. Yeah. I really resonate with  

[01:48:13] Unknown:

the idea of putting all that MIT legalese, and MIT is a wonderful license and and my favorite. But, putting all that legalese is   is kind of a bend the knee thing. And that has been a big theme for me over, like, the past   couple years, even kind of part of the whole, like, Bitcoin journey for me is realizing that like, like putting up with bullshit   just because you gotta   and doing things that you know are stupid just because you're supposed to,   it kinda grates on you. And it kinda Yeah. It kinda like it's like it's like it makes you   small   and makes you feel shitty. So, like, you know, putting on a mask to walk into a a restaurant.  

You know? You know it's stupid,   and you're doing it just to get along. And it it it it you just you're dick shrivels up. You know? Like, it's just It's a principles thing. Yeah. It's a principles thing. And so, like,   so yeah. I I I like the license. I just think it also should say plus this, man. I don't know why that's so controversial.  

[01:49:15] Unknown:

I hope you guys still end up working together and this fight doesn't, yeah. No. He's gonna fork off  

[01:49:20] Unknown:

and have one that has a license that says bless this mess on it. I promise not to sue you, but you're vulnerable to me, I guess. So Yeah. Do you think Bitcoin 4 should take the Tony license? Can't do any of the back end.   Should it? I don't   I don't know if you can just yeah. No. I don't think that. You think MIT is good good for Bitcoin Core?  

[01:49:41] Unknown:

Jeez, man. I don't know. I'm just fucking around with you. I don't I don't know about that. Bitcoin Core is gonna stay with MIT. It's completely false, and anyone can do whatever the fuck they want with it.   We have Big Kite who's sitting on the couch, listening and also commenting on   the matrix chat. He is correct. We will have Wiz,   on dispatch this week. We're not gonna dox any other participants of dispatch this week. Tony is correct.   But if you wanna get notified, either join the matrix chat,   watch Twitter,   or you can subscribe on YouTube or Twitch, and you will get notified when the live streams go up. If you subscribe on Bitcoin TV or your favorite podcast app,   you will get or Telegram, you will get notified   after the fact, with the archive, whether that's audio only or with video as well.  

So those are your options. There's gonna be a lot of great conversations this week.   Boys, before we finish, let's wrap up with some final thoughts.   Tony, you first.  

[01:50:39] Unknown:

Final thoughts.   I don't know. I've I've been hunting here a lot. It's exciting.   Nashville is great. Come check it out.   I'm having a blast being here and being with the crew and and seeing all my friends also come as well. This is pretty amazing. Fuck. Yeah. Thanks, Tony. Paul, final thoughts. Appreciate you. Appreciate you having me, and,  

[01:51:00] Unknown:

trust is a scaling solution.  

[01:51:03] Unknown:

Fuck. Yeah.   As always, I wanna thank the freaks who joined us in the live chat. You guys make this special. I wanna thank all the freaks who continue to support the show with Bitcoin. You keep this show on the air without ads and without sponsors focused purely on actionable discussion.   I love you all. Stay on Bold and StackSats. Until next time.