Topic: [Review] Robosats Bitcoin Lightning on-/off-ramp (no KYC, P2P, Tor) (Read 692 times)

Update: Robosats is soon to be decentralized: https://github.com/RoboSats/robosats/blob/main/federation.md

There will be a federated client app released, where users can search for coordinators, and select the most reputable. In return, completing users' trades successfully will increase your revenue as coordinator, so you're incentivized to be as responsible and fair as possible. Coordinators must be technically competent with bitcoin, lightning, robosats, and be informed with the corresponded regulations in their country.

The thing I personally dislike is that coordinators take custody of your coins, until the trade is finished, in comparison with Bisq where everything settles without sacrificing self-custody. The difference with Bisq, is that this isn't a DAO, and so, the trade cost won't be fixed, but it will drop as new competitive coordinators enter the market.

Experimental software in here: http://robotestagw3dcxmd66r4rgksb4nmmr43fh77bzn2ia2eucduyeafnyd.onion

You are forgetting about the bitcoin being traded itself. Generally (for fiat/btc trades) both parties put in a security deposit (and trading fees), and the party selling the bitcoin puts that in the escrow address as well. Should the seller not receive payment from the buyer, then the escrowed amount includes the full amount of bitcoin which was going to be sold, plus two sets of security deposits, so enough to refund the seller everything they put up plus pay for their inconvenience. And if it is the buyer who does not receive payment from seller, then again, the escrow contains all the bitcoin which were to be sold, so can fully reimburse the buyer plus use the security deposits to cover the inconvenience.

Yes, the Bisq DAO. That's the term I was missing and couldn't remember, so I just called it a pool.

But the escrowed funds and security deposits aren't going to be enough to reimburse the affected party entirely because the traders aren't locking in an amount in a 1/1 ratio. A much smaller amount is generally used for the security deposit. So the funds you receive as compensation has to originate partly from the security deposit and partly from the trading fees that Bisq collects from all of its users, right?

The arbitrator is reimbursed from the Bisq DAO, generally using the funds which the two involved parties previously locked in escrow.

The escrow is indeed 2-of-2 as you say, but as part of it being set up, both parties sign a time locked transaction which sends all the coins in the escrow (so both users' deposits) to the Bisq DAO address, time locked to 20 days after when the escrow is created. If the parties cannot reach an agreement within 20 days with the help of a mediator +/- arbitrator, then the transaction is broadcast and the funds in escrow are sent to the Bisq DAO. The arbitrator will later request reimbursement from the DAO depending on the final outcome of their arbitration.

This was posted a long time ago, so my apologies that I am quoting and replying to it now. I read a bit more about Bisq the other week after there was some talk about the service elsewhere on the forum. Bisq uses 2/2 multisig for traded funds. It used to be 2/3 in the past where a mediator had one key as well. Apparently, there was too big of a risk for collusion between one party and the mediator, so they changed the system to 2/2 multisig. Mediators can't resolve disputes any longer in the sense that they can decide who is right and should get the money (they possess no keys). They can only suggest the outcomes and explain their reasoning to the trading partners. The two parties can then agree or disagree with the mediator's decision.

If one side disagrees, an arbitrator can be contacted to step in. If the arbitrator decides that one party got financially damaged from the trade, they pay the damages personally. The arbitrator then gets reimbursement from Bisq's pool in some other way. 

The default mining fees are quite high precisely so that the first confirmation is quick. But if the mempools are empty and you don't mind waiting some more, the fees can be lowered from the settings page. And it's not really recommended to be a market taker on Bisq since the trading fee is almost 1%. Makers pay much less. 

Oh yes, you're right. That's not insignificant. I didn't pay much attention to the % I pay in fees, also because I usually use BSQ and I'm usually maker, so it's not that expensive.

Interesting; that has moved forward, apparently it is planned only for Bisq 2, though.
This should be the latest thread / discussion about it: https://github.com/bisq-network/proposals/issues/373

Last message in May, hopefully it will be implemented!

If only it was the mining fees alone: https://bisq.wiki/Trading_fees

Then you have the mining fees (which aren't cheap nowadays, especially for 4 multi-sig transactions). Taker pays most here as well. Then, due to lack of instantaneous settlement, there are the premium costs.

Robosats doesn't charge anything due to lightning. Bisq should consider adding that option; in fact they do consider.

That's exactly how I understood it, too! Should be accurate.

I'm pretty sure that it's free. In Bisq you just pay mining fees and almost nothing for the service (at least if you pay in BSQ tokens). The mining fees aren't that cheap (a couple bucks usually) since it's multisig and it sets a relatively high fee to get confirmed quickly. This is nonexistent in Robosats, of course due to Lightning. HODL invoices and the escrow platform, replace the multisig setup, basically.

This service rocks.

Essentially, as far as I've understood, it's an escrow; offer maker <-> robosats <-> offer taker.

• Alice makes an offer wherein she sells 0.01 LN-BTC for $160, and waits until someone takes it.
• Bob takes the offer.
• Alice is asked to send some bitcoin (less than 0.01) to Robosats, to ensure she isn't going to cheat. (if she tries to, Robosats won't refund this amount)
• Robosats prepares a HODL invoice, and gives it to Alice.
• Alice pays that amount, and then Robosats asks her to send the 0.01 LN-BTC.
• Robosats prepares again a HODL invoice, and gives it to Alice.
• Once that's paid, Bob is asked to send $160.
• Once Alice receives the $160, she can confirm it, and have the money sent to Bob.

I haven't checked how disputes work. The cons are two: centralized platform (can be shut down anytime), and page about safety is empty.

It's cheaper than Bisq. Not sure but I think I just settled a trade free of charge. And of course: Lightning!

Make simple youtube search with term giftcard scam and you will see what I am talking about.
Here is one example video explaining how Visa gift card scam work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7tljKx2iyg

I didn't try it yet, however I applied for beta testing and I hope to receive the card, but it was only available for United States as physical cards, virtual cards should work worldwide.
There is unofficial CoinDebit topic topic I created few months ago, so do your own research and don't trust anything I wrote.
I am not vouching for anything

You can still make P2P trade, meet with someone face to face and you exchange Bitcoin for cash, this way no bank is involved.

Oh yes, I mean it's not on them, but hold invoices (sometimes called HODL invoices) are part of Lightning since roughly 2019 - not sure why wallet support of this feature is so bad. It's pretty exciting and useful for use-cases like here, where you 'lock in' a payment as a commitment / anti-spam mechanism, but the receiver (Robosats) simply 'holds' it instead of immediately 'accepting' it, which would actually cause the transfer to happen. This way they can use it at any time, but if you trade normally and there are no issues, it is just declined and the payment shows as 'failed' in your wallet.

Proving bank transfers in a dispute is definitely problematic; but it's inherent to P2P trades - same thing exists in bisq.
In my book, that's not a problem with the P2P trading system, but a problem with the bank. SEPA bank transfer using an IBAN doesn't technically require a name, so I would just use a bank that doesn't add arbitrary rules on top (like requiring me to give strangers my full name).

So you don't like P2P sales because banks are crap? How do you like to sell Bitcoin? Never sell?

The first thing I noticed when I checked the Robosats' website was a flaw: I opened http://robosats6tkf3eva7x2voqso3a5wcorsnw34jveyxfqi2fu7oyheasid.onion/, then in a new tab, I opened https://unsafe.robosats.com/ (which redirected me to the .onion site again). I went back to my first tab, and downloaded the JSON credentials file. This file had a different token than was shown in my browser.
When I reload the page and save the JSON without opening the same site in another tab, the token matches. I would have expected the token to be stored as a browser cookie instead of changing at each reload, but I guess it's a privacy feature.

I like how open they are on "don't trust us, use small amounts"! That's refreshing, and much better than just shouting "we're the safest".

The Wallet Compatibility Table isn't promising. The 2 LN wallets I use vary from "not recommended" to "so-so", and I wouldn't like switching just for this. It's actually the first time I've heard of a "hold invoice", it sounds like a reservation on a creditcard and I had no idea LN can do this.

The thing that worries me most is disputes: "It is useful to send images/screenshots." If you're selling P2P for a bank transfer, it's not possible to have hard evidence, and screenshots can be faked. It gets worse if you buy a gift card that gets cancelled later (for instance because it was bought with a stolen creditcard), used by the seller himself, or you receive dollars from a compromised bank account.

Amazon for instance charges your creditcard (with zero amount) if you pay by gift card, and can block your account if you try to use a gift card without creditcard connected to your account. So if the gift card is stolen, Amazon won't lose money over it. You will.

Within my country, (some) banks check the account name when making a transaction, and it will for sure show up on your bank statements. That's one reason why I don't like P2P Bitcoin sales.

I've always assumed anonymous prepaid cards are mostly scams using other people's stolen information, as I didn't think any business would get a license to issue these cards without collecting KYC. Have you tried CoinDebit personally and can vouch for it? Does it have a forum thread or similar public discussion with decent reviews anywhere? I'd be very interested in acquiring some anonymous prepaid cards so I can spend bitcoin in businesses which don't accept it directly without sacrificing privacy and risking identity theft via KYC.

Yeah, I'm always wary of using gift cards online for this reason. At least if you do it in person then you don't have an account to ban. Partly why as I said above I'd always stick to a reputable seller for gift cards and never trade them peer to peer unless I trust the other party already.

That's a pretty good point... This feature should only be used for businesses that allow you to have an account where you redeem the gift card and get credited a balance. That way you can both verify that it's the balance which has been specified for the trade and there is no way to redeem it a second time. I'm not sure how many restaurants have that, though; probably only chain restaurants.

Good point; this whole deal about anonymous / KYC-free debit cards is still new to me. I hope it's here to stay and more businesses will pop up that offer the same, as well. I've got to try it myself, though.

I wasn't aware about this risk of stolen gift cards and that freezing gift cards was a thing; thanks for bringing it up. I'm sure it is helpful information for others reading this thread.

I still prefer using cash instead of anything else, but second best thing would be anonymous prepaid cards like CoinDebit.
Last reports from them is that so many people are using this cards, volume increased and they can't handle all the traffic.

I am not fan of using gift cards, they can be limited to one specific shop and you could always end up with stolen gift cards that could permanently block your account in that shop.
Maybe this is not such a big problem as banning your bank or exchange account, but it's still problematic and there is no way to check if some gift card is stolen or not.

The only issue with this is that it is very easy for a scammer to take advantage of using gift cards. If the store or restaurant they are accepting the gift card for doesn't offer some kind of online tool to check the balance, then the receiver has no way of verifying the balance of the gift card without physically going to the merchant. And of course, even if the receiver does confirm the balance on the gift card, the other party can still spend the balance in the meantime.

There are plenty of reputable gift card sellers such as Bitrefill or CoinsBee which you can still buy from anonymously. I would favor those over peer to peer via giftcards, unless it was with a trading partner you have already developed a level of trust with.

Little 'bump' to this topic. I recently did my first (Instant-)SEPA transaction on Robosats and it went pretty quickly and smoothly again.
It took roughly 2 hours for someone to accept my +5% offer; I would recommend to choose a percentage above market that is on the low side in the current offer book to get a trade partner quickly.
It's really not bad getting a few more percentage points and still a quick trading partner; easily enough to offset costs for sending on-chain funds to a Lightning wallet, for example.

Just let it sit while working; whenever someone takes the offer the web application rings to notify you.

The downside of SEPA payments is that the trading partner will know your IBAN; however you don't have to disclose your name (if the bank's UI requires it, tell them to input anything at random) - IBANs are unique and completely sufficient to make the money reach the right bank account.

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One idea that sprung to mind for people who actually need a form of fiat to feed themselves, but have to stay as anonymous as humanly possible and can't reveal anything (like an IBAN) to a trading partner to minimize risk.
They could use the 'free text field' payment method to choose a local restaurant chain's gift card as payment method. Some grocery stores even have gift cards. This would allow oppressed and prosecuted people who often have the highest privacy requirements, to feed themselves through Bitcoin.

I know, gift cards suck, but somehow it's currently the most private way to hold / use fiat money.. Probably the reason why they are so popular with online scammers, too.

I agree with o_e_l_e_o and would also like to refer dkbit98 to the various discussion threads we have on this topic..

WasabiWallet.io | Open-source, non-custodial Bitcoin Wallet for desktop
The default Wasabi Wallet coordinator will start censoring "illegal" UTXOs
Wasabi blacklisting update - open letter / 24 questions discussion thread

I've mostly followed all of them, and nowhere found a good argument to continue using Wasabi, but I also don't think I've read anything from dkbit98 over there, so if I didn't just miss your posts, feel free to add your opinions somewhere in there; always glad to hear what you're saying!

There is a huge difference between blockchain analysis firms blanket surveilling every address and transaction which exists, trying to gain whatever information they can from it, and your own wallet actively paying a blockchain analysis firm to spend extra resources to look specifically at your addresses and your coins and asking them to obtain very specific information about the so called "risk" your coins pose. I would liken it to the difference between Google trying to passively track everything everyone does online, and actively using Google search while logged in to a Google account, knowing they will be tracking you very closely and very specifically.

Given that we have access to a perfectly good (or even better) coinjoin implementation which doesn't do this, I see no reason whatsoever to ever use Wasabi.

You are going to get your addresses and transactions scaned by some blockchain analytics company even if you don't use any third party tools and wallets.
Coinjoin is not strictly connected with Wasabi, and anyone can fork and tweak their tech because it's open source.
Even using coins directly with Wasabi ( I don't suggest doing that) you are not going to lose your coins just denied mixing with their main coordinator.
I don't agree with some Wasabi decisions but I am not going to turn myself into witch hunter trying to burned them on stick for this.

Who can gurantee that someone is not tracking everything you do on Robosats and Lightning?
Just sayin.

As long as he doesn't mean 'use their () tech' as in 'use CoinJoin tech' (with a different coordinator and within Trezor Suite), hard pass from me, too.
But I can see other wallets spinning up own coordinators and / or switching to Samourai for now. Long-term something decentralized would be preferred, of course. If that can be added into Trezor Suite and other popular wallet applications, it might get a lot more traction.

Regarding this: I just dug up the JoinMarket ANN thread. It's not clear from the original post if it has a centralized coordinator or not.
Also funny that it mentions 'tainted coins' and that you get 'clean coins from exchanges' through JoinMarket..

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Stats are looking good to me!

Even if that's the case, and you can guarantee that Trezor are unable to collect any data from you, you are still exposing your hardware wallet addresses directly to a blockchain analysis company via Wasabi. That's a hard pass from me.

Ok, sure. Yes, it would work, in the same way that Wasabi "works", but it would be awful for your privacy.

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Was poking about Reddit and found these stats: https://www.reddit.com/r/robosats/comments/vp9jid/some_amazing_robosats_stats/

A few weeks out of date, but seems like they've made 1804 successful trades in 4 months, so around 15 a day. Not bad for the launch of a brand new service. Hopefully will continue to grow!

I see. I'm a bit out of the loop about Bisq, but I'll check it out.

I had linked to it already..

Complexity of current Bisq v1 is biggest obstacle for more popularity with people, that is why they are making this major changes.
From screenshots I saw next Bisq version 2 will have some big improvements, but Trezor wallet integration and using it as internal wallet is just my speculation.

Back to Robosats topic.
Cool video instructions posted by BTC Sessions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW_wzRz_BDI

I mean I'm not saying it's the best thing adding more and more trusted servers, but I don't now why it wouldn't work. It should work just as well as Wasabi 1.x or using Samourai directly.

Simplifications coming with Bisq 2.0 are one of the biggest obstacles?
Or will these simplifications make it harder to use with an external wallet? I'm not sure I'm following here.

I don't understand what's the issue of doing a trade on Bisq and selecting 'external wallet' instead of 'internal wallet' for [1] funding a trade and [2] receiving bought funds. I believe both is possible with external wallet as-is.

This means you can do everything with 'external wallet' and use addresses from your hardware wallet to do so.

Well I said there are some things I didn't like from this interview, but I see potential in the same time.
I don't have anything personal against Wasabi team, and it's always possible to use their technology without any censorship and blacklisting with new coordinator.
It's even possible to use their tech and add it in Trezor Suite, that is open source wallet and it has Tor switch, so I am not worried about privacy implications if you turn off sharing information.

It's not just a matter of one extra transactions but simplifications that is coming with Bisq 2.0, that is one of the biggest obstacle for more people using Bisq.
I would much rather use Trezor directly connected with Bisq than sending new transactions each time I want to make a trade.
If centralized exchanges are connecting hardware wallets (FTX+ledger) I don't see why decentralized exchanges wouldn't do the same thing.

I agree. Essentially the same approach which ChipMixer is now taking as well. If Robosats continues to grow, then you can guarantee that there will be malicious clone sites popping up before long. If everyone knows from the outset that you cannot use the clearnet link to trade, then it is less likely that a new user will type "robosats" in to a clearnet search engine and lose their coins on a scam.

I'm not sure how that would work. For Samourai coinjoin, without running your own server then you lose your privacy to the Samourai servers. If you then put Trezor servers on top of that, that's another entity which can see what you are doing.

That should be no problem; in the video walkthrough the guy actually buys an Amazon giftcard from a different country's Amazon page. That does indeed work.
Account freezes because of stolen gift cards sounds like a pretty rare risk. In the worst case you can always open a new account, right?

o_e_l_e_o just clarified that clearnet mirrors are basically only for demonstration purposes, in my opinion a great choice by Robosats. A compromised clearnet mirror could still deanonymize you as a (potential) user of Bitcoin / Lightning / Robosats and fake mirrors could pop up that don't have this limitation, though. Hence just stick to the GitHub page's onion link.

There's nothing to find a solution for; it works already. I mean, you can literally fund a trade offer 'from external wallet' (and use e.g. your Trezor), as well as receiving the security deposit back directly to the hardware wallet. If you're buying, I believe you can also receive to external wallet, as well. Otherwise, it's just 1 on-chain transaction away; not a big deal either to be honest.

Damn; especially since they could just do What Sparrow does and use the (so far) better coordinator by Samourai.

Thanks for the link. You had me excited about coinjoins being integrated with Trezor devices, but it turns out they are planning to do it all in conjunction with Wasabi, and we all know how terrible that is. A real shame. Unless of course Trezor are planning to spin up their own coordinator and not spy on their users?

The stuff about peer to peer trading is interesting. Cool that Trezor are investigating ways to provide it, but I also have lots of question about the privacy implications since in all likelihood it will take place via the Trezor Suite software and so therefore Trezor would be able to link all your trades to all your holdings, which isn't great.

I guess we'll have to wait and see, but my excitement is far less than it was a few hours ago.

I would only consider this as a fallback option, in case some big attack happens on Tor again.
Yes most people use free VPN that is usually nothing more than government agencies spying or cheap proxy servers without any privacy.

I am trying to find it, but I set my browser to auto-erase all my history when I shut it down, so it's lost now and I can't find it searching anywhere.
There are some parts of this interview I didn't like, but I guess you will have to trust my words until I find and post original link.
There is even a part were Pavel is speaking about Bitcointalk forum and how it all started

EDIT:
I found it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV_cKk_N0Wg

PS
I know Bitcoin Takeover is sponsored by Wasabi so you can skip those parts if you want, but he is a cool bitcoiner guy.

Sure, but it's impossible for Robosats to enforce only allowing clearnet access with a VPN, and plenty of people use bad VPNs or do stupid things with their VPN and then leak a bunch of data. Safer to not allow it at all given how easy it is to use Tor.

Yes please. Do you have link so I could listen as well? Quite a change of direction from implementing (and then removing) AOPP a few months ago.

No idea.

Problem with gift cards is that you can use them only in specific shops and they are not available worldwide in same cases.
I remember one case from bitcointalk when customer got his account frozen because there was suspicion that his gift cards were stolen.

You can always a good vpn with clearnet, maybe Mullvad or something similar.
I am not saying it's perfect solution, and yes this is also centralized and goes through 5/9/14 eys countries, but I think it's still better than using it just with clearnet.

I just listened one interview with Trezor main developer Pavel Rusnak (who also worked on some Linux OS btw) and he said that Trezor is thinking of finding solutions to work with Bisq, and using Coinjoins directly from Trezor Suite.
Combination of Bisq and Trezor working together would be amazing, and I am sure it would increase liquidity.
They are also thinking of some other ways to create non-kyc bitcoin purchase on-ramp in EU, and that is not an easy task.

Oh very nice, but is anyone actually using Robosats with I2P or not?

They are a step ahead of you there
https://learn.robosats.com/docs/access/#-privately-with-i2p

This is roughly the number I see every time I have checked in the last few months, although right now there are 20 open offers across both books. But if we see from the above graph that they are doing up to 0.5 BTC a day, and most trades seem be in the region of ~$100, then that would work out to about 100 trades a day at present. And the ticker at the bottom of the site says 200+ active users in the last 24 hours.

If you connect via clearnet, you get the following warning banner at the top of the screen:

So you can use clearnet to view orders, but not to actually trade.

I'm not sure if there's a (moving) average anywhere to check out or maybe a graph over time, but right now there are only 7 open sell offers and 5 buy offers.
It appears that some banks nowadays have internal money transfer options, like Revolut and N26 which I see often on Robosats. Probably faster and safer (when it comes to irreversibility) than SEPA bank transfers.
By the way; money transfers not being immutable is a very real risk; essentially people would scam each other on P2P exchanges by reversing SEPA transactions. Gift cards are pretty good when it comes to this, as far as I know - one of the reason online scammers actually like gift cards as payment method.

I guess they could be used as fallback, but I wouldn't recommend that. In case of a decentralized system where peers connect P2P, it would be less of an issue. But since it's centralized, if you connect through clearnet, they could easily store your IP (or be forced to do it) and hand it to authorities.

So far Bisq seems to have much more liquidity than Robosats and in both cases I've never really experienced lack of liquidity as an issue.
Too many different projects could decrease liquidity in each of them individually, but since it focuses on a little bit of a different niche (Lightning, no decentralization, but higher convenience), I believe Robosats is a welcome addition to our 'pool of options' when it comes to on- and off-ramps.

Are there enough orders already created by other people, maybe with some order book, and what payment options is most popular in Robosats?
It's nice that custom payment methods could be added, maybe face-to-face, or some payment methods for specific countries.

Yeah I know, I was just speaking related with recent problems that affected other wallets and services with Tor support.
Good thing is that Robosats at least has some fallback option, and maybe I2P or some other alternative could also be used.

Bisq is generally better option but like you said it has it's negative sides, and it doesn't have much liquidity and offers in some countries and regions.
I heard they are preparing big updates for new 2.0 version, and we could see one Bisq forked exchange coming out in future.
It doesn't hurt to have Robosats in the mix, we need more options to improve Bitcoin privacy.

Well, the gift cards are priced in fiat; so I'm not sure if they're fiat or not..

Good question. As a Bitcoin seller, you can apparently get a few % above market on Robosats, but to get it through quicker I created a new order at 0% above market. I do believe that similarly to Bisq, the usage is higher than what the order book suggests and that prices seem so high (for Bitcoin buyers) since cheaper offers are simply bought up quickly. Need more experience with it to say for sure, though.

You can accept / request pretty much any payment method you want. You just select a currency and the payment method within that currency. The list is extremely long and you also have a 'free text field' option.


In the left picture, I'm just typing out 'BitcoinTalkCoin' after having selected a few recommended payment methods. In the right picture, that's what it looks like after it's selected. As long as you can find a buyer in the specified trading period, you can choose any payment method you want. When someone accepts your offer, you get a chat window where you agree on one of the payment methods that had been specified and wait for the payment.


I think that Robosats will be the least of our worries if Tor gets seriously attacked. A ton of Bitcoin nodes would also stop working, as well as the whole of Bisq and the WikiLeaks upload page.

Of course; using something like this through clearnet immediately cuts its effectiveness dramatically. Especially with regards to the aspect of being safe in case of a hostile takeover of the platform and / or future data requests by authorities (- remember it's a centralized service as opposed to Bisq where there's no central database with data to extort).

Indeed!

Are they offering only gift cards or there are other payment methods available?
It's nice to see that Robosats exchange works with Tor browser, but I am not sure what happens if attacks on Tor network continue in future.
On their github page I see there is clearnet domains but they are marked as unsafe and they are not recommended.

I am going through their learn page, and those stats look very good with increasing volume in last few months:


https://learn.robosats.com/

Thanks for the write up. I still haven't got around to trying it out myself yet.

I wasn't aware that gift cards were an option though, I thought it was fiat only. I guess I only ever looked at the order book and saw fiat methods, but I see now if you try to create an order you can specify gift cards (or indeed any payment method whatsoever, including Monero).

When you did your trade, did you accept an open order or did you create one yourself? I'm just wondering if you created an order and someone filled it in under an hour, which would suggest it is being used more than the quite sparse order book would suggest.

This page explains how the bonds, escrow, and disputes work.

Robosats review

A few days ago, I've tried Robosats for the first time. Here are my first impressions and thoughts about this service.
[Disclaimer: obviously unpaid, unsponsored]

It calls itself a 'simple and private LN P2P exchange'; though it's important that this is not a crypto-to-crypto, but a Bitcoin-to-fiat exchange; hence why I call it an 'on-/off-ramp', instead.


Here's their own short description from GitHub:

They do have clear-net mirrors, but it's always recommended to just take the .onion URL from their GitHub readme and paste it into a Tor-enabled browser (or simply Tor Browser).
I don't think I should explain how it works, because it would be just a copy from their README or video walkthroughs; I'll just leave some impressions and opinions.

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I did a small trade, selling some BTC for a gift card and it went through in under an hour. The whole process is honestly smoother and quicker than my otherwise favourite on-/off-ramp, Bisq.
Especially for newcomers, I believe it's a great way to get started. By paying sellers with gift cards, they could acquire the first small amounts of sats necessary do open larger Bisq trades, for examples, which do need a certain amount of owned funds as security deposit; until now always a big issues to on-ramp people without requiring them to get that amount from a CEX in the first place.

What it is:

• It is peer-to-peer.
  
• It is pretty cheap and quick.
  
• It is suited for onboarding users.
  
• It is anonymous (Tor, no KYC, no account, Lightning).
  
• It should be trustless like Bisq, through the use of HODL invoices, instead of Bitcoin SCRIPT smart contracts.

What it is not:

• It is not decentralized.
  

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What I continue to recommend Bisq for:

• Larger sums that you want to receive on-chain or are hard to route on LN.
• Experienced users that already know how to mix coins after buying them.

What I consider using Robosats in the future for:

• Need to exchange more quickly than what I can do on Bisq.
• Need smaller amounts of fiat / Bitcoin.
• Want to sell / buy Lightning funds anyway (so I can skip swapping on-chain funds to off-chain or vice versa).

I can see how for many users it can be a big benefit that you don't have to install an application and keep it running for sometimes a few days; however for me it's not a factor. Just want to give this point a 'honorable mention'.

Also do keep in mind again, this is a centralized service. It could be censored, shut down, or there could be issues with the escrows. In Bisq, if I'm not mistaken, escrow only kicks in if there's a dispute, otherwise it's all done through Bitcoin smart contracts and multisig transactions through the client software. I am not 100% sure about how escrow / support works on Robosats; maybe someone can help me figure this out 100%.

I'd be glad to hear your experiences with this on-/off-ramp!