Topic: Aqua wallet - Bitcoin, Lightning, Liquid (Read 892 times)

a new release of the aqua wallet has been published.
with the new 0.1.51 version (under the name 'bravo') there is now, among other things, the function of sending compatibility with lnurl pay and ln addresses
you can see the complete changelog here: https://github.com/AquaWallet/aqua-wallet/releases/tag/v0.1.51

This isn't directly related to the Aqua wallet, but then again, it could be in the future. Boltz exchange has drastically lowered the network fees for swaps between Lightning and Liquid Bitcoin. The fees have dropped from around 400 sats to 40 sats. They explain this change by saying that they are beta testing a liquid protocol upgrade which makes it possible to send transactions with fees of 0.01 sat/vByte instead of 0.1 sat/vByte.

There are some comments and discussions about it here:
https://twitter.com/Boltzhq/status/1782801788762026244

That's acceptable. But considering the Ethereum fees when engaging with smart contracts, the total fee is going to be much higher than 1% especially for smaller amounts. Seems like Aqua Wallet isn't taking a cut. Maybe they have an agreement with Sideshift which is outside of the scope of the article you provided.

Are you saying that the scammers found a way to get their fake tokens onto the Sideshift exchange? I have never heard of that before. Usually when someone receives fake tokens, it's a P2P deal involving two private wallets and not from centralized exchanges. 

Correct.
Just watch out when you are using sideshift exchange, scammers started creating fake Tether tokens and they already scammed some users.
Real Tether is issued by tether.to (official domain) and scammers created their own fake tether with tether.rip  
This fake domain is still active but there is no website associated with it.

https://www.whois.com/whois/tether.rip

Fee is 1% (sideshift fee)  plus miners fees on both chains.

https://jan3.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/22600605854747-Understanding-Tron-and-Ethereum-USDt-fees-in-AQUA

What's the liquidity like and how many assets can be swapped? Is this an internal exchange developed by the Aqua wallet team or have they partnered with something like Changelly or ChangeNOW to offer the swaps? I am asking because it will hopefully be a no-KYC and no AML-check swaps, and not a semi-scam service as the services I mentioned offer.

What's the fee for this conversion?

Are there any restrictions on exchanges? What is the maximum exchange amount at one time?

Inside the wallet you can send to other blockchains.

You need to choose if you want to send Liquid USDT to another Liquid USDT wallet, or to ETH or TRON chain.

Not yet, but they are planning to release it.
Meanwhile you can use other alternatives like Blockstream Green wallet and Specter wallet.
Green wallet recently added coin control for Liquid assets, and you can also use it with jade hardware wallet or ledger nano s.

Go and look for yourself.
I think they are using decentralized SideSwap and Boltz, but you can download app and check there, it's free.
https://sideswap.io/
https://boltz.exchange/

You can send to erc20 shitcoin address but I would never do that because of high fees.

It's more complicated, not simple.
https://jan3.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&category=16926860509083&query=usdt

i mean if i what withdraw L-USDT from aqua. Where it can be swaped to simple USDT ?

it looks to the be a little smaller exchange rate

Right now is its L-BTC=69,906 USD
Coinmarketcap BTC =$70,265.27



You can send any chain USDT to aqua, it will convert automatically

1)If I do a swap L-BTC to L-USDT, what kind of liquidity is there? How much can i change so that the exchange rate does not change?
2)What is the exchange rate? How close is it to Binance for example?
3)Where can I withdraw the L-USDT? how to change them to USDT erc-20 ?

any desktop version ?

Aqua wallet doesn't have coin control yet, but you can easily move coins or import keys to Blockstream Green desktop wallet and use coin control.
This wallet should be mainly used for L-BTC and L-USDT, and I suggest moving to hardware wallets for on chain Bitcoin.
For me Aqua is great wallet for situations like this when fees on chain are high.

If you only want to use Lightning Network I think that Phoenix wallet is better for that, and it will have cheaper fees.

For android I would suggest BlueWallet and Electrum. If you want to have the best features in a strong open source wallet. But the topic is about Aqua. I believe they should add coin control. Perhaps the should be told that in a feature request. But as I said, I am not entirely sure I will use it, so I won't request this feature for the time being. I think about sending some funds and using it strictly as an LN wallet. But I use Phoenix which is good so far and WoS for smaller amounts which is also good despite being custodial.

The LN implementation is very good imo. The best I have ever seen.

I am surprised by the fact that so few mobile wallets support coin control. Such a basic feature, missing in basically every wallet. I miss coinomi 

Yeap I thought so. It's better than WoS though because of it supporting Liquid and also being non custodial. I will give it a try and I will let people know. To be honest I am more interested in the LN aspect of the app.

I have only LN balance, so I can't confirm.

It doesn't look like they do. I see no option for that in the app menu

I have no balance to check it, so please can you tell me if the wallet supports coin control for on-chain transactions? I could just fund my wallet and then try to see if I can choose coins, but I can't fund it at the moment, so I would appreciate it. Thanks.

I just received my first lightning network transaction using aqua wallet.

Very straight forward.  No need to open a channel. Very simple to use and Very efficient.

The easiest implementation of LN I have seen so far

Aqua wallet released new version v0.1.30 few days ago so please update when you can:
https://github.com/AquaWallet/aqua-wallet

Liquid network released updated open source explorer version that has much more information about live federation audit system.
Design is very similar like well known mempool.space explorer for mainnet bitcoin:


https://liquid.network/

Thank you. As far as I know, Green wallet doesn't support LN payments, but only on-chain and Liquid.
I think Aqua also supports buying BTC, but Green doesn't.

Anyway, have you concluded which one is best for you (as a mobile wallet only)?

I did use both Green and Aqua wallet.
Green desktop wallet is better if you want to use BTC and L-BTC with hardware wallets (Jade or ledger s), so it's much more secure, but you can use it standalone also.
Aqua mobile wallet is more used for spending and accepting smaller payments in LN and L-BTC, this is something in between Lightning and on-chain bitcoin, but you have all of them supported.
Advantage of Aqua wallet is that it has integrated swaps, and it can accept USDT from other chains and convert it to Liquid.

All wallets currently supporting Liquid assets (L-BTC, L-USDT, etc):

• Aqua wallet
• Green wallet
• Specter wallet
• Jade HW
• Ledger HW

I am interested in knowing more about the Liquid aspect of Bitcoin.

I have tested it with Blockstream Green and I liked it so far, but I need to study more about Liquid Bitcoin.

Has anyone ever used Green? I am interested in comparing these 2 wallets (Green and Aqua), but only for the Liquid Bitcoin and not the other features. Are there any significant differences?

Perhaps dkbit98 can help me? I see that you point out Green above.

That is a lot of IF's, and let's face it Lightning Network alone will never be so popular and easy to use for the masses.
I heard many issues people had with channels and bunch of different wallets, than you also have to pay transaction fees each time you open and close channels.
I didn't say Aqua is better for everyone, it's better for me and it has LN integrated, so I can send and receive LN payments also if I want.
And yes, I know Liquid is federated network, that is why I said it's not meant to be used for keeping savings.

It's not as clear-cut, though. Lightning is fully permissionless, way closer to the Bitcoin ethos than a permissioned sidechain. On L-BTC you do have that dependence on the 'Liquid Federation':

They say it themselves; the trade-offs are different, not necessarily better or 'much safer'.

If you run your own Lightning node and / or use watchtowers, I'd say that Lightning is safer, since I can close channels on my own terms whenever I want, and there is no federation or anyone else who could prevent me from doing so. I have full control over my channels and what I do with them, at all times. In that sense, you could say it's more safe, because there is no risk of getting my funds locked by an external party.

On the other hand, if you use something like a mobile Lightning wallet that's offline most of the time and your channels have too short lock times, your channel partner (usually the developer of the wallet) could steal your funds, though.

The real, definitive answer to what's more secure is: 'it depends'.

Swap feature was always available for android version, and only reason why it wasn't available for iPhones is because of strict terms their store have for approving apps.

Not good for storage YET, but support for hardware wallets is coming soon.
I would say that it is much safer to keep L-BTC on Aqua wallet or in Jade hardware wallet, than to keep anything in Lightning Network.
This wallet is not meant for large amount of coins, it should be used for spending and/or for consolidation, you swap to Bitcoin and move to cold storage as savings.

I had to update twice.. and then now I see the ability to swap.. I was kind of waiting for this feature because it could allow some ways to be able to use lightning network when the onchain fees have gone up but channels had not been created in advance.. even on Phoenix I had seen 40k to 60k satoshi ($25-$40) channel creation fees, but now they seem to have had come down into the 8k to 9k satoshi ($2.50 to $4) arena.. at least somewhat temporarily.  So yeah testing out some sending and receiving but also testing out some swapping might give some ideas regarding the competitiveness of the fees..

And frequently I am concerned about how poor people (or even people who engage in a lot of smaller amount transactions) manage their fees when they sometimes are creating a lot of very low value (such as less than $100) UTXOs, and there sometimes will need to be routes around how to maybe create some intermediate levels of holding coins.. so maybe if there is skepticism of holding coins with 3rd parties or holding on some of the lightning network services, this aqua could serve as a kind of intermediary.. but still likely not good for storage, but if someone might be building up his UTXO amount to get it to be in the $500-$1k range prior to creating a UTXO and sending to a private wallet, then this Aqua wallet might be a good intermediary way to accomplish such task.

After reading your info here I have installed  Aqua  on my iPhone and tested it during couple of weeks.

Yesterday iOS flavor of this  wallet was elevated to v. 0.1.22 .

The most noticeable feature (brought by the latest 0.1.22 update) is support of available  swaps on Marketplace.

So far so good, I go on with testing.

Good to hear that you started drinking some of the Aqua Liquid
They are also working on desktop wallet, so keep an eye on that.
Also make sure not to keep all your fortune in Liquid assets, move BTC on-chain when fees are lower.

Thanks!

I knew that ledger nano s supports liquid, but I don't understand why would they remove support for other models, another strange decision from ledger team.  
Anyway, Jade hardware wallet would probably be better, and you can also use Green wallet and Specter desktop wallet for Liquid assets.
I was talking with Satochip team and they think adding L-BTC and L-USDT could be an interesting idea.

Good news.

I am already using aqua wallet in my phone.

I will soon add L-BTC to bitcoindata.science  (in donations page and in the balance Checker tool).

But I also found something interesting about liquid.

Ledger Nano S model (the old one) supports liquid network, while new models doesn't

As promised Aqua wallet developers just released code as open source on their github page with latest update v0.1.19.
With new update there are some improvements, bug fixes and they finally added new dark theme mod.
You can download new Aqua wallet on github as apk, on g00gle and apple store, and F-droid release is coming soon.

Official github:
https://github.com/AquaWallet/aqua-wallet/releases/tag/v0.1.19

Read more information on Aqua blog page:
https://jan3.com/blog/aqua-wallet-now-open-source-software/

There was an old Aqua wallet from Blockstream, but Jan3 took over development from them.

They are totally different company but they cooperate and they are both part of federation system for Liquid network, with other companies around the word.

Not at all, even grandmas can use this wallet, it is that simple.
However, this is not meant to be LN-only wallet, but it uses seed words so it is much safer than custodial LN wallets.

I watched it, very good show.
Guys from Jan3 confirmed that Aqua source code will be released as open source in one or two weeks max, they are currently cleaning the code from junk.

L-USDT is the same as Tether but not using any altcoin blockchains.
You can easily swap L-USDT for L-BTC, and fees are much lower than on-chain.

This is only for third-party partner services, like upcoming debit cards or similar stuff they are going to offer.

---

Aqua wallet just got approved and released on g00gle Play store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.aquawallet.android

Perhaps the original idea was to make the wallet custodial. A non-custodial wallet has no way to enforce KYC on a user who can simply ignore their requests and take their coins elsewhere if they don't want to comply. Only a custodial service can freeze your assets and ask you to verify your identity to regain access.

I sill have not deposited any value onto Aqua, yet part of my curiosity also includes how they might allow for swapping between assets, and it appears that the "market place" has not gone live yet, and I was wondering if that was the main place to swap between assets, and then if there were local laws, then they might have initially been considering ways to comply to various local jurisdictions, but maybe they are still trying to figure out how they might want to activate some of the swapping features that might cause some regulatory attention from various jurisdictions.

We can see that their marketplace interface includes:  "coming soon" announcements for buying, swaps, paying bills and debit cards.^**  



**Note that for illustrative purposes, the App allowed me to choose El Salvador  (you can see by the flag on the upper right corner of the screenshot) as my jurisdiction.  I chose with the consideration that maybe El Salvador might not have any jurisdictional regulatory obstacles.... but still I am not actually in El Salvador at the moment

I cannot see any other place to carry out the swaps (for example to swap from BTC or from one of the forms of Tether into lightning network tokens) that are actually active rather than in the "coming soon" category.  

Maybe one of the shortest term objectives would be trying to figure out ways around (or to minimize) various kinds of onchain bitcoin fees during periods in which it is experiencing high fees, yet to attempt to do so without necessarily giving any support to shitcoins.. .. so maybe once BTC is on the Aqua wallet, then it could be converted into lightning network tokens for way less fees than it might cost to do so through other onchain ways during high fee times?

According to a review published on Stacker News, they originally had terms which stated that Aqua Wallet had the right to collect KYC information.


That has since been removed and replaced with the following: ”AQUA Wallet does not collect, process or store any personal information or documents.”

The target audience for this wallet seems to be USDT users on altcoin blockchains and people who want to use Lightning with minimal risk. By the looks of it, Liquid still has a long way to go in convincing users they should adopt it.

Exchanges like Binance allow you to decide the network you want to use when you withdraw your USDT. Regardless of what type you deposited, you can withdraw a different one. They don't care. What's important is depositing the correct type of asset into the right address. The Omni layer USDT has lost its importance because you have blockchains like Tron and Ethereum that are quicker and cheaper to use. I didn't know that Binance doesn't even list the Omni layer one, but that tells you everything you need to know about its popularity.   

You gave us a summary what we should expect when we download the new Aqua wallet. But you forgot one thing. How have they increased security in the Aqua wallet app. I see that the main focus of the team is to improve the speed of transaction and ease the process of using mobile wallet. However, its essential we to place security as priority. Since the App is on testing i would a little amount and see how it works tomorrow.

Absolutely. This is what i have been thinking. It seems they rebranded from Blockstream and changed a few of the UI, Colors and functionality. Of which they introduced some new features in the App. This is because I noticed they use the same codebase. In conclusion it's just a product under the Blockstream company that was excluded to be a product on its own.

Oh i see its closed source 

Just checked on x now and saw this reply

Thanks for that further explication (or explanation). 

With that, I am thinking that Aqua Wallet is going to need to be added to Blockstream's list of places to get or swap into or out of Liquid Tether and/or Liquid BTC. 

With so many different tokens (or seeming tokens), no wonder some of us (maybe just me?) get(s) confused about which things are shitcoins (or attached to shitcoins) and which ones are more pegged to bitcoin and bitcoin principles (even if there tend to be various centralizing tendencies in some of the ways that we might want to interact with Tether, versus Liquid versus Lightning Network.. in contrast to how many layers we might be away from bitcoin's main chain).

I think omni is not exactly a second layer. They are on chain transactions.

They are more likely 1st layer token, like ethereum tokens.

Liquid Tether is probably some 2nd layer (liquid) token.

Tether on omni were on chain transactions

https://www.omnilayer.org/

This is how I understand it, I might be not 100% correct but I think it is different than 2nd layer  transactions.

As of now, it seems that only few exchanges are offering deposits and withdrawals for Tether on Liquid network actually, and except Bitfinex they are mostly small or local. I hope some bigger exchanges will accept it soon, otherwise we will need to open another account on another exchange with likely another KYC requirement to address if we want to deal with it.
https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/900005355626-How-do-I-get-Liquid-based-Tether-USDt-
Fortunately, it seems that there are more exchanges supporting Liquid BTC https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/900000629383-Which-platforms-support-the-Liquid-Network-

I guess that is what I meant, and you answered my question because I did not realize or consider what layer I might have had been on in the past.

I have never transacted in Tether in any kind of way except being on the exchanges.. although I think that when I had a Bitfinex account between about 2016 and 2017, I had Tether on that account, but I don't know what form of Tether, because when they forced all USA users off of their platform, I am pretty sure that I just converted all of that to BTC to transfer my BTC off of that account.

From about 2018 to 2021, I had a Binance account that used Tether (but I don't recall which type), and when they forced me to stop using their service in 2021, and per their recommendation, I decided to move all of my then Binance balances over to a new account that I created on their BinanceUS branch, and I am pretty sure that I transferred the Tether, but I had not remembered whether that was on Ethereum, even though it appears that the Tether that I currently hold on BinanceUS is ethereum based.. that seems to be the default.    But if I go to withdraw Tether it gives me the below six options



Note: Avax C-Chain, BNB Smart Chain (BEP20), Ethereum (ERC20), Polygon (unavailable), Solana and Tron (TRC20).  There is not even a Bitcoin option of apparently Omni or Liquid.


By the way, I recall that BinanceUS made me switch from Tether to dollars in 2021 (or maybe I did it on my own), and then earlier this year, they discontinued dollars, so I chose to switch to Tether, and I have been using Tether on BinanceUS ever since, even though I had not realized it was the Ethereum based on. .or maybe it does not really matter which one of the bases it is since they are holding it.. but if I am going to transfer it, then I have options to use either the ethereum or the tron version if I were going to move it over to Aqua... since neither Liquid nor Omni seems to be available with BinanceUS... which is all news to me.. if I am not repeating myself a bit too much on this point. hahahaha

If by BTC Tether you mean Tether on Omni layer, you have to know that Tether is discontinuing its support and it might be hard or even impossible to exchange them after next September. So it's better to use Tether from other blockchain/network for now, you can find the current balance of each ones(currently 14) here : https://tether.to/en/transparency/#usdt

https://tether.to/en/supported-protocols
And as Pmalek said above it's not the same protocol and not the same token as the Liquid one.

When you say BTC tether, I assume you mean the asset on the Omni layer, right? Both Omni and Liquid are layer 2 solutions for Bitcoin that allow the creation and transfer of different tokens (in this case the tether token). They are not the same protocol. I think Omni layer was the first network where the tether token resided. The Liquid network came later.

The last few days, BTCSessions (Ben Perrin) had been talking about Aqua Wallet, and in his latest episode of "Why Are We Bullish?," he had Samson Mow as one of the guests who had been involved in Aqua Wallet from the start (during time that Mow was still at Blockstream - as is shown in that above 2020 press release), and seems to still be involved with Aqua wallet, and Mow mentioned that the source code would be released as open-source within a few days, a week or at least a relatively short-period of time^tm - even though Mow seemed to be poo-pooing the importance of open-sourcing (and usually I like Mow - but I found his poo-pooing comment to be kind of irritating and patronizing).

I still have not used Aqua Wallet, yet I downloaded it and created a wallet - and I was looking at the Aqua assets page.



It shows three kinds of Tether (Liquid, Ethereum and Tron), and I am wondering what is "Liquid Tether"?  Is Liquid Tether the same as BTC Tether?  or is there something different about Liquid Tether as compared with BTC Tether?   Maybe it is just naming and I have to play with some of it more and I might be able to answer this particular question.

You are right, it is.
Here is a press release announcing the wallet back in September 2020. It's a wallet created by the Blockstream and Blockstream Green developers, probably meant to popularize the Liquid network. Even the logo is almost identical. Same style and font, but with the addition of a new color.

As the name suggests, to self-moderate them the way they think is right without having to report unwanted spam to mods, hoping they will remove it. There is no controversy with self-moderated topics unless they are opened in boards like Reputation or for the purpose of preventing the truth.

Closed source is a non starter for me.  The fiat shitcoin integrations show their priorities are way off. 

Also, what's up with people posting self moderated topics?   

Isn't aqua wallet an old blockstream wallet?

There is a 2020 topic here.

Maybe they broke apart from blockstream? But they are still using Liquid, like green wallet.

Aqua is not in blockstream.com website anymore.

Edit:
I need to receive an LN payment.. downloaded this wallet to give a try
Aqua wallet LN is a bit frustrating.

It says "don't leave screen until payment is received " when I generated the invoice.

We are still so far from mass adoption...

I guess the fees are deducted from the currency you are sending, similarly to how centralized exchanges do it. You send a certain amount of USDT tokens and pay the fees in USDT. When we are on the topic of Tron, all addresses have a certain amount of daily energy they can use to move TRX for free each day. That means free transactions with 0 fees. But since USDT tokens are considered smart contract interactions, they require more "energy", which is usually not enough for free transactions unless you have a significant amount of staked coins. 

Liquidity is coming from Boltz and Sideswap.

You are going to pay some fees when using USDT from tron blockchain, but you would do the same thing even if using tron crap, unless you are messing around with staking, voting, and energy bullshit.

It's available for Android with APK file, until g00gle play store approves it.

Nice video to watch with Samson Mow and Prince Filip talking abotu Aqua wallet:
https://youtu.be/yi7a2n6VMH4

Short video review by theBTCcourse:
https://youtu.be/9b_VYjKAc-s

I wonder how they do it and where the liquidity comes from? If I receive USDT on Tron and can spend it without owning any Tron tokens, someone must pay the network fees for me in TRX, while there is a conversion in the background of some of my assets in an equivalent amount. I have never owned any assets on Liquid layer.
The link to the App Store for AQUA Wallet is working now with a notification that the app is only available for iPhones.

Yes it has LN, Liquid and Bitcoin onchain.
I think they are using something similar like Breeze wallet for lightning, and for swaps they are using Boltz and Sideswap.
Good news that source code for Aqua wallet will be open source and released in public soon, but let's wait for confirmation of that.

So far I am really impressed with this wallet and how easy and simple is to use it, but expect to have few bugs in first few releases.
This could easily become one of my main spend mobile wallets... and no more need to use other wallets for stable coins.
Few improvements I would like to see is hardware wallet support, desktop app, and showing sats and or mbtc value.

I just installed it and received some lightning bitcoin sent from muun wallet.

I think the aqua lightning wallet is also on the liquid network, so not sure of the mechanics going on in the background, but it seems like sending lightning from regular lightning wallet to one on liquid network is no problem. I did get hit with a $6 transaction fee on the Muun wallet side, but that was expected because of the way they do lightning transactions and was a reason for me moving my balance to a new wallet with cheaper fees. I dont think the high fee was because of liquid network, but maybe someone else has more info on that.

I just got my hands on a brand new mobile wallet for bitcoin called Aqua wallet.

Aqua wallet is non-custodial wallet created by Jan3 company and it is using Liquid and Lightning layer two in addition to regular Bitcoin main net.

After selecting Layer 2 Bitcoin option I can click Receive button and choose between Lightning and Liquid:



I think this could be useful wallet especially in time when fees are high, and I would much rather use this when I need to receive stable coins USDT or EUR in more private way.
One more interesting is that you can accept payments from other chains like ethereum or tron and receive them as USDT.
If we compare fees we can see that transactions are much cheaper than most other alternatives available today, and transactions can be confidential:



I don't see any links for github, so I don't know anything about license but I would love to see this being open source soon.

Aqua wallet is not yet approved and available on g00gle play and app store, but APK file is available for testing on their website.
Just make sure to backup your seed words in safe place after wallet creation.
I think there is a space to improve this wallet, maybe with adding Tor switch, dark theme, releasing source code, but it's not a bad start for first version.


https://aquawallet.io/

Important note:
Aqua wallet is using BIP84 derivation path for Bitcoin and BIP49 for Liquid_BTC.

Have you tested Aqua wallet and what do you think about it?