Lightning has been very successful so far, but adoption for small transactions in the web are still not as streamlined as much as I would like. You still need to generate invoices, scan QR codes, switch tabs, etc.
We already have a few lightning technologies that help with these things, like LNURL-pay, LNURL-auth, WebLN,
lightning address, etc.
I found a great project that puts some of these things together in an easy to use interface. It's called
Alby and you can see it here:
https://getalby.comAlby brings Bitcoin payments to the web with in-browser payments and identity, all with your own wallet.
With Alby you're able to do many things easily in the web using your own lightning node(or using a custodial one if you don't have one). Here are some of the highlights of the project from my perspective:
Easily send and receive lightning payments from the webLogin to websites with your lightning wallet, no more user/pass for each site Generate your own lightning address which you can then use to get paid/tipped directly to your lightning wallet from different places, like your profile at youtube, twitter, reddit, etc, or your own website.For example, if you visit
my reddit profile you'll see the option to tip me directly from the web if you installed the Alby extension:
If you click on Send Satoshis, you'll see the following:
That's extremely easy to let anyone tip you from any platform you're using, even on custom made websites, directly to your own lightning wallet. Note that the lightning address works with any other software, it's not only for the Alby extension. That means you can just share it to someone and they can pay to you directly from their wallet using your lightning address (if supported by the wallet, of course).
The project is completely open sourceThe source code is available here:
https://github.com/getAlby/lightning-browser-extensionYou can use your own lightning nodeAlby currently supports LND and Eclair nodes directly. If you don't want to connect your own node, or you don't have one, they also give you access to a free
LNDHub that you can use with them. You can also use
LNBits to connect basically any lightning node to it. For example if you have a c-lightning node, you would need LNBits.
You can of course send and receive lightning invoices as usualHere's the send screen:
Here's the receive screen:
And finally, of course it is password protectedI really think this is one of the best streamlined experiences there are out there in the web with lightning. You can use your own lightning node, or a custodial one, it's open source, and it works great. It's worth checking it out if you're interested in using lightning in the web.