Topic: Opinions on Phoenix Wallet? - page 3. (Read 1414 times)

I've installed Phoenix wallet, and could receive a few sat from BlueWallet just fine. However, even 15 sat doesn't work:
If I send from BlueWallet to Lightning-Roulette and from there to Phoenix, it works fine. I've had similar problems with Eclair (connected to Acinq): BlueWallet is usually better connected than using my own channels.

I am a bit surprised by the design choices they made: When I receive just a few sat, the Phoenix guys open a channel for me, and pay the on-chain transaction fees! On-chain transaction fees are currently very low, but it's still 246 sat, which is considerably more than the few sat I deposited. If I would close the channel, the Phoenix guys will lose money on it again. Their fees are really low so I hope this will be a profitable business model in the long run.

If everything works as they say it does, I'm quite impressed! It is indeed much easier than opening my own channels in Eclair.
However, it leads to many questions: right after my first incoming LN transaction, Phoenix opened the channel. But the channel isn't instantly confirmed, but it already allows me to make LN transactions. I have no idea how they pull that off.
Phoenix says the 12 seed words are enough to restore the wallet, that means they somehow link my open LN channel to those seed words (because the wallet is not custodial). Here too, I have no idea how they pull that off. For small amounts I'm totally fine trusting them, but for larger amounts it would be a good test to see if I can restore my channel in another application (again: I have no idea how).

I don't necessarily have an issue with the fees. They are high by bitcoin standards, but low when compared to using a credit card. My concern is more that the wallet could charge fees higher than what is advertised via intermediary LN nodes. 

I do see LN wallets in the future that are user friendly. I would predict we will see user-friendly desktop LN wallets before mobile wallets because coding mobile software is somewhat more complex than desktop software, and mobile OS will restrict what apps can do more than what macOS and Windows.

Over the long term, I would predict there are a handful of fairly large LN node operators that most end users will connect to, and will compete with, and connect to each other. The topology would somewhat resemble that of airport routes, but with many more routes.

With the above being said, I would envision future wallets LN wallets to connect to nodes with some kind of standardized URI that is unique to LN. I think most users will need to connect to one of the major hubs, and those that connect to multiple hubs will force each hub to compete on price. Something similar to what Phoenix does, except the user can choose which nodes to connect to.

I think LN wallets will use seeds, similar to what Phoenix uses, but will also automatically backup channel states to cloud storage during and after each transaction. This is important because without this, if you lose access to your wallet file, you will have no way to protect yourself against your counterparty from closing a channel using an old closing transaction.

Unfortunately, none of the above involves the creator of the software earning any kind of income.

Well yes, I guess doing it through Phoenix is less trustless than doing it through other Lightning wallets. But I guess it's sensible though as chances are people are going to use it for smaller transactions anyway, and it's in exchange for far easier usability. Probably a risk:reward that's worth it.

^Most probably a controversial opinion but yea. LOL

Yep. Probably a reasonable amount of fee since they do the channel handling I guess? Percentage based fees can suck but I guess lightning is mostly for smaller transactions anyway.

Definitely not the best as it's mostly subjective, but I'd say it's the easiest at the moment as far as I know.

No doubt the fees and privacy is a downside. But I guess these are the sacrifices for having an ultra mega nooby friendly service, as so the user doesn't need to care about nodes and servers and such, just easily make LN transactions almost like doing on-chain transactions. What do you think? Are there possible ways of handling things without sacrificing ease-of-use?

It looks like the end-user must send bitcoin to the devs(?) of the wallet software in order to have funds in your LN channel.

It is also unclear how your wallet will know the appropriate channel state if you have to restore from the seed, based on their FAQ.

From what I can tell, you are only connecting to the Phoenix Wallet LN nodes via LN, so all of your payments would need to route through them. They are already taking a fee to send/receive transactions, but their LN nodes could connect to other intermediary LN nodes they control to take additional, undisclosed fees.

I think a better setup for mobile wallets would be for the wallet to connect to a server, such as your home computer that will act as a LN node, and the wallet will instruct the server to send a LN payment or generate a LN invoice, and provide the invoice to the phone so it can display it to the end user. The server would handle things such as blockchain monitoring, and backups during every transaction.

it relies a lot on their servers which adds a level of centralization to this wallet and i never like it when the "wallet" is taking fees whenever the user wants to send coins even though it is very small. there are some trade-offs but they are at least very transparent about it so that is a good sign.
the wallet is also open source and can be compiled and run from the source code instead of downloading it from google play which is another positive sign.

all in all i think it is a good LN wallet but i still think there isn't any "best" LN wallets available yet.

Curious on your opinions on Phoenix Wallet[1]. While it's definitely not the best in a privacy perspective, I think it's probably the best noob-friendly(and when I meant noob, I meant literally tech illiterate) lightning wallet we have right now.

Besides privacy and a small cut they take with fees, I don't see any downside. Is there some thing I don't see? Is there any reason why we should not be recommending this wallet to the public(not the best recommendation I know, but for the people who aren't capable of learning to use wallets like Breez/BlueWallet etc)? Feel free to call me dumb if there's something I don't see.

Link to their faq: https://phoenix.acinq.co/faq

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with this wallet. Just genuinely curious.

---

[1] https://phoenix.acinq.co/