K3tan 2022 Year in Review

Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast. A show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Today we're doing a year in review episode with my friend K3tan of Ministry of Nodes. So we talk a little bit about some of the software and hardware and Bitcoin projects over the year and what came out on top in his recent survey. We discuss a few practical tips. As well as thoughts on self-sovereignty and adoption, Lightning, as well as Charmian, eCash, Fedimint, and Cashu, and some ideas on what to expect for next year. The show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Now you already know Swan is the place where you can buy and learn about Bitcoin. Now, Swan is launching a new service, it's called Swan Premium. You receive exclusive research reports, educational content, you get discounts on Bitcoin products, and you will also receive privileged access to many Swan events. Swan Premium Premium normally is going to cost twenty dollars a month, but Swan is offering it for free right now for a year for those of you who join the waitlist. That website is over at swan dot com slash premium. That website is swan dot com slash premium. Are you a builder in this space? Blockstream have a community coming out, it's called Build on L2. This is a community for Bitcoin builders, whether you are working on things like Core Lightning or the Liquid Network. This is an interactive community platform where you can share your, what you're working on, you can help build together, You can get some mentorship, whether you are a product manager, a designer, or an engineer, there'll be events, there'll be a mentorship program that can help fast-track you with your success, as well as having a community space to learn something new. So go and sign up, it's over at buildonl2 dot com. Now, for those of you considering what conferences you want to attend next year, especially if you are in or near Europe, think about PTC Prague. This is going to be on June eighth to tenth in Prague, Czech Republic. It's gonna be fantastic. In Europe, they're looking at around ten thousand people coming, so whether that is fresh people who are new to Bitcoin or long timers, Bitcoin whales, Bitcoin insiders, developers, miners, all being connected together in a unique networking opportunity. There will be more than sixty world-class speakers and a hundred companies there. I'll be one of the hosts on the main stage. You can expect a relaxed summer atmosphere. Prague is a beautiful city, so if you haven't been, come and check it out. It's a great place to build in some tourism alongside your visit. You can get your tickets over at btcpr Stephan Livera to get your ticket. And now onto the show with K3tan. K3tan, welcome back to the show. Thank you,

Stephan. Thanks for having me.

How are you? Yeah, doing well. I am, you know, just reflecting on the year gone by, and, yeah, ready to talk about what happened this year. I mean, so much, obviously, so much happened this year. And in many ways, it's very cyclical, right? Like we've seen blowups and things happen over the years, right? Mt. 1919 era, and now 2022, we've seen, we've seen FTX, Celsius, Terra Luna, Voyager, you name it, right? So, yeah, I guess at an overall level, what, what's been your thought about how this year panned out in the world of Bitcoin?

Well, I think people are learning more, as far as I can see, towards the latter end of the year, the learning curve for people in terms of just getting rekt, I think I think is, it's showing, i-i-it's starting to really, I guess, yeah, more people are, are tuning into the signal and trying to disregard the noise, because there's a lot of noise there, and I think this year has probably, yeah, been that one, you know, catastrophic event that has, has altered people's perceptions and altered people's thinking, and I'm seeing that a lot. So that, that's, that's a positive, you know, people are wanting to learn more about Bitcoin.

Yeah. I think for many people, if we think about the world today, probably a lot of people now, they know about Bitcoin, but have they used it? Have they even purchased some? Have they-- And of course, you can think of it like that funnel, right? Like there's so many people who might even, they think they hold some Bitcoin, really they have a paper IOU claim on an exchange somewhere or a custodian somewhere. But of course, it's all-- Maybe that's part of the pro-- That's part of the journey for a lot of people. but I think it Masternode and people like that who are in this world, let's say, versus people who are more peripheral and maybe they think of it as just like, "Oh, I'm just having it on my custodial exchange," or, you know, they're, they're kind of thinking of it like that. But nevertheless, you did a survey recently, so, let's go through some of the results and just ch- just chat a little bit about each category, what we saw, and maybe just some of the key innovations even as well, like while we go through it,

Fine. Well, basically, yeah, look, I, I, this is just for fun, okay? This is more of just, like, it's not a scientific sort of objective poll, it's just a poll that I've ran out on Twitter. Mostly my followers are Bitcoin Twitter, people, and so, you know, those, those are the types of people that are going to be responding as well. it may not have objectiveness, it may not, you know, it's a popularity contest at, at, at some, you know, grade. So Yeah, just keep that in mind as we go through this. It's not something, you know, it's not, you know, designed to give you, "This is the best solution ever, and that's it, full stop." it's more around, "What are people thinking? what other suggestions from left field, that, you know, some other people are, you know, contributing to the space, that may not be as well known, which could be fantastic as well." So I just put out this, you know, tweet with, you know system and then try to sort of pick out some of the very, very best projects that I'm seeing in the space and seeing what, are we hitting the mark here? What are some comments? And, you know, let's go through those results. Yeah,

yeah. And I think one other point, just it's worthwhile pointing out is, as you say, yeah, there's a little bit of an element of popularity contest and sometimes the crowd can be a bit fickle, right? Like, what was a popular thing two years ago or three years ago might have been super popular and now it's like You know?

And I, and I reckon I can give you an example of that in this very, poll that I've, that I've sort of put out, all this, you know? So I think, yeah, let's come to it. Yeah,

yeah, we'll go into it, yeah. So best hardware wallet, what was the best hardware wallet? Okay, so Clear Signal,

the, the, the choices were Trezor, Ledger, Coldcard, Passport. We had eight hundred and fifty-two votes on this one, and we had fifty-eight percent voting for Coldcard, loves the cold card. So yeah, look, fantastic, project, by NDK, and it, it is one of the better hardware wallets. It's Bitcoin only, source viewable. I wish it was FOS, but hey, you know. and then the other thing that was a, also a clear signal, and this was more in the comments, is that, seed signer, I got laid into for not even putting that on the, on the, as one of the options. so yeah, seed signer seems to be Very popular pick amongst the, Bitcoin Twitter, followers. So, yeah, you know, that's, that's something to be said. and the other thing that, another comment that I found was interesting was that one thing that I think the seed sign, like, one thing that was, came out of this poll, was the fact that people didn't like the words hardware wallet. they actually preferred signing device. So, I don't know if that's kind of, you know, something that will be used in the future future, I think hardware wallet is probably now stuck. but yeah, a lot of people like to, to, to use the more correct term, which is a signing device. It is what it is.

Yeah, and look, I mean, I've been trying, I, and again, old habits die hard, right? But I've been trying to say a hardware signing device, but then I'm stuck as well when I talk to people, I say, "Oh, previously known as a hardware wallet," then it's, you know, it's very wordy, right? And you can It also gets to that point of, is multisig gonna get popular or not? And I know there's a big debate on Twitter about, "Oh no, stop pushing." Some people say, "No, stop trying to push people into multisig," and other people like, "No, single sig and a passphrase is good enough." And, you know, I, I think that conversation is still, ongoing. Agreed, Stephan. Very, much so agreed. Yeah. Okay, so, yeah, maybe we'll come back to some of that other stuff later, but we

Me, we had six hundred and eighty-nine votes on this, and the options were Stacker News, No BS Bitcoin, The Sovereign Bitcoiner, and Bitcoin Magazine, and Bitcoin Magazine took it out at thirty-eight point six percent. So a clear signal there to say that, a lot of people are reading Bitcoin Magazine for their trusted source of news, which is interesting. I, I really like Stacker News, I, I thought that that would be h-higher up than what it was. I thought that would have taken the leading spot, but, you know, it, it kind of fell very, very much similar to no, no BS Bitcoin as well. so yeah, I, those are my news sources. I, I frequent Stack and News all the time and no BS Bitcoin, their, their blusts come out, and I get a lot of my new news from them. What about you? I, is that where you get your news from, or are there any other places? I think

it's fair to point out people like you and I who are like really more plugged into the, the, the discussion. We see it happen live

Yeah, I might point them to Bitcoin Magazine, you know, because for them, it's like, I mean, look, now conflicts of interest be disclosed here, right? I do write for Bitcoin Magazine here and there, they do invite me for their conferences, obviously. But even, honestly, like, honestly, even putting that aside, even if I, you know, I know people might not believe me, but even if I didn't write for Bitcoin Magazine, even if I didn't speak at Bitcoin con- Bitcoin Magazine conferences and things, I genuinely think there's a, there's a purpose to that

Analysts and, you know, researching and writing articles and things. There's, there's a point to that, like having it explained, right? Whereas you're not gonna have on Sacka Dot News, it's not necessarily going to explain every little thing about, oh, this is what Taproot is or this is what, you know, I think from that point of view, maybe that's why people are saying, yeah, Bitcoin Magazine, because it's kind of a more professionalized news and education source. So, yeah, that's my guess, that's my best guess as to

Three options here, Whirlpool, Wasabi, and, JoinMarket. Clear signal here with, Whirlpool, all up six hundred and sixty-four votes, sixty-four percent went to Whirlpool. So there's some clear signal there that Bitcoin Twitter likes Whirlpool, so that's the coin join implementation of choice. Any thoughts around that, Stephan?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's just been constant battles back and forth about all the constant privacy battles and, you know, people getting pulled into the crossfire, people like me, and maybe- Even, even a bit yourself and people like Odell as well, where, you know, we might be out here trying to help educate people, and then you mention something, and then all of a sudden, the fans of the other side will go after you for not, you know, for not being as enthusiastic about their thing as they are. And, yeah, so I think- Yes, Stefan, I think we should just leave it there and move on to the next one. What do you think? Yeah, before we get cancelled for saying anything more, I don't know. Electrum server

The best Electrum server implementation, this only had four hundred and ninety-seven votes. we had Electrum Rust server, we had Electrum X, and the newcomer, which is Fulcrum. And surprisingly, Electrum Rust server and Fulcrum tied at both thirty-seven point four percent. And so that suggests to me that people are looking towards a, a Fulcrum server that would help the guys who are probably coin joining with Whirlpool, who are going further down their keychain, and so that would be a bit more More efficient than an Electrum-Rust server, but again, an Electrum-Rust server is a little bit more lightweight if you're just a casual user, Electrum-Rust server runs phenomenally well. But yeah, you know, Fulcrum is the newer contender here, mostly popularized by Craig Braw, probably because I think he was looking for, you know, something, another backend to support, and I think that Fulcrum provides that. So if you're, you know, thinking about whirlpooling and continuously mixing your coins, then Fulcrum presents a phenomenal

Yeah, and I noticed it is even part of the Ministry of Nodes Ubuntu node box guide. I, I have FOLCRUM running on, the laptop just under this desk right now, and I think some of the debates there were, you know, some people sort of had this sense of, "Ah, that's like a, quote unquote, that's a, that's a shitcoin indexer, right? Because it's being run by a, apparently being run by a B-casher or something like this." But, I mean, nevertheless, the software can be used for Bitcoin Core, Node package people are using, right? Like if they, if they're doing their own, yeah, they could just do Fulcrum on the Ministry of Nodes guide. But if they're doing something like, if they've got a, you know, Raspiblitz or Nodle or one of these, then it kind of just depends what they've got, what they, what's they're supporting on there. So exactly, you know, maybe it's kind of related to that. But I think, nevertheless, I mean, of course, it's a great thing that people are running their

Right? And, and the thing is, it's a very good tool for an Uncle Jim, right? So if you're a listener right now and you are, you know, like us, we can't stop talking and thinking about Bitcoin, and you wanna help your family and friends, the Electrum server, having any, any of these, is a great option because then you can tell your family and friends, "Hey, just connect to mine," right? Just open up, you know, Electrum or Sparrow or something similar or even Phoenix and these, and point it to my Electrum server.

Definitely, definitely. Alright, so next up, we got desktop software.

Yes, the best desktop software wallet. we had a turnout of seven hundred and forty votes for this. The options were Sparrow Wallet, Specter Desktop, Wasabi Wallet, and Electrum Wallet, and the clear, clear signal was Sparrow Wallet at sixty-eight point five percent. Let's not beat around the bush here, Stephan, I do think that Sparrow Wallet is the best wallet that has, you know, been in the Bitcoin space for a-- since forever. I really, really like it. Craig Roy's done a fantastic job on it, and I'm really, really happy to see these tools being, developed out. But that doesn't, you know, I, I, I think Electrum wallet was the OG wallet as well. I don't think we can discount that, that was the, I mean, Sparrow wallet somewhat stands on the shoulders of the Electrum wallet giant. So I think, you know, having said that though, like, Sparrow wallet is, yeah, I, I, I think the community

It's been a phenomenal tool, and it gets better and better. They've got, you know, Sparrow, server, where you can run it in the terminal now. So, you know, things are, yeah, they've got the Whirlpool implementation in there, and, you know, you can connect up all your hardware wallets, you can connect up all the way through to your, Fulcrum or Electrum server, and, you know, i-it's a phenomenal all-in-one package that just works across, you know, Linux, Mac, and

We had an a- Android or iOS application of it, but maybe, maybe one day I can convince Craig.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and that's, that's the other important point, because we are going to see, you know, and you know what, maybe next year this is gonna become a thing as well. Maybe you'll have a new option of like mobile coordinator, right? So for example, like a nunchuck or a keeper, right? Because, because that's the thing, a lot of people nowadays, they don't have a desktop or laptop

PC, Right? Like the rise of this kind of mobile coordinator, like even like a Blue Wallet, I think you can do like Blue Wallet multisig and things like this, although I haven't played around with it much myself. But you know, maybe that's something as well. But yeah, I mean, certainly of the, desktop software, yeah, Sparrow is fantastic. So yeah, it is, it is hard to beat, right? Because of the, the range of features, the range of hardware wallet support, and the ease of use, the reliability is, is really good. So, you

Okay, so we had a five hundred and seventy-five votes for this one. w-the options were BTC Pay Server, TallyCoin, and, SatSale. clear, clear, clear, clear signal here with ninety-three percent BTC Pay Server. if you are trying to accept Bitcoin for your sh- for your goods and services, I, I think B-BTC Pay Server presents, a phenomenal option for you. Having said that though, because there is really no competitor to BTC Pay Server, I'm looking for disruption. Maybe that's something that we can say, okay, well, BTC Pay Server, yes, it's the premier one, but, you know, what if-- is there something lighter? Is there something a little bit snappier? Is it something that's, you know, just maybe we have a BTC Pay Lite, and I think, I think, you know, SatSale and TallyCoin may be that middle ground. Maybe those things come into fruition. Maybe there's a new project that comes out, or BTC Pay Server delivers something like a BTC Pay Lite version where you don't have to

Against their whole intent, you know, because the whole, remember, remember the reason they started, right? It was because of all the blindfolded pay. So it's kind of hard. Now, you could say, what if they did some kind of light version that was like Neutrino only and only, you know, you know, you know, maybe it made certain trade-offs that like it still was, although I think, for example, Nicola Doria was quite critical of Neutrino. So, you know, like I think it's unlikely to, it's unlikely to happen like that.

But it's, again, it's hard to, basically like, you can't, like, if you are serious in this space, like, you pretty much, it's one of the best tools, you have to, you know, you pretty much have to use it, unless you're using some other third party payment provider, you know? And so the whole point of Bitcoin, of course, we're trying to, trying to make it so people can be self sovereign, of course. But I mean, that's it, there are other things out there. So for example, I can think

of, In some cases, these are custodial, like I think CoinOS is custodial, so it's certainly a tool out there, so maybe, yeah, we'll just have to see what comes in the future there. So let's move on. We've got podcasting two point oh. So who's, king of the heap here?

Yeah, so we had four hundred and twenty votes on this one, and the options were Fountain, Breeze, and Podverse FM, and the clear winner here with seventy-three percent is Fountain. So I haven't used Fountain too much, in fact I think you may have an account there, so tell us about it. Is it any good? Are you making, you know, are you making bank, Stefan?

Well, I mean, I, I do have it enabled. I, to be honest, I don't, I don't talk about it as often. I do here and there, kind of do the shout, it's kind of mention, "Oh, hey, here's some boostergrams I got and things." Basically, I, money I earn from that, I basically just donate that to Bitcoin open source projects. I don't actually kind What I, you know, listen on. So for example, like PocketCasts has like the parody between its web interface and my phone, so I can kind of seamlessly be out, let's say I'm in the gym listening on my phone, and then later I'm back on my desktop, it's all synced up, right? So that for me, I still need that just for me to be able to get through all the, you know, in terms of for me personally as a listener. But in terms of speaking about the podcasting two point oh phenomenon, I think it's, you know, What matters is getting users who aren't Bitcoiners per se. Like, will people, will someone use this kind of thing even if they're not a Bitcoiner per se? I think that's really the, that's really the, the mark in the road or that's the, that's where the rubber meets the road for me. I, I'd need to see that before I kind of get more bullish on the whole idea personally. Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. So yeah, now Lightning implementation. So this is obviously gonna be hotly debated. So, let's see who

we had five hundred and seven votes. the options were LND, Core Lightning, Eclair, and Rust Lightning. and actually, LND and Core Lightning are sort of neck and neck. So LND forty-six percent and Core Lightning came in at forty-two percent, which to be honest, I was surprised about that. having said that though, I think if I did this poll about a year or year and a half ago, I think LND would have been the eighty-five to ninety percent. And Core Lightning, yeah. Right? So I just see that and go, "Wow, well done, Core, Core Lightning, in being an alternative implementation to the Lightning Network. " And maybe, maybe it could also be because LND, did have a couple of bugs, throughout the year, that basically shut down the entire, implementation. So that was a pretty nasty bug there, but it got resolved very, very quickly. But yeah Yeah, it's not, it's not ideal. And then, yeah, you know, the, yeah. So I think Core Lightning was the sort of alternative that kind of sort of got people on board.

It's risen a lot. Yeah. And perhaps, I mean, some context there, right? Like, I think the Core Lightning team is a lot smaller, or at least it was a lot smaller. It is. Like it was basically three full-time developers, right? And now, you know, they're getting more people on, and, you know, I think that may be part of it

A lot of the other people to work together with, so they kind of, a lot of the node implementations were using that, and other software was kind of more easily playing together with LND, so maybe that's part of what happened there. But hey, it's a good thing to see more competition. We're seeing even, the rise of LDK as an example, right? Like we're seeing LDK being used as part of Bitkit. And I know, when Blue Wallet, I believe now Blue Wallet as a default is custodial and using like LND Hub, which is

Iteration they're moving towards is an LDK ver-based version. So, so that's kind of, you know, or you're seeing, you know, so we are seeing a bit more hot competition, let's say, amongst the Lightning implementations. So, you know, let's see what lo-see what happens there. Let's go to on-chain. So, what was the best on-chain Bitcoin wallet?

Okay, so the best on-chain mobile wallet was Samurai Wallet, okay? and the other options were Samurai Wallet, Blue Wallet, Green Wallet, and we had seven hundred and twenty-five votes Samurai Wallet came in with fifty percent of those votes. so I think there's a clear winner there in terms of on-chain mobile wallets. having said that though, I do think that Samurai Wal- I'm surprised that it's only fifty percent. I would have thought it was something like in the seventy to eighty percent. And maybe it's because I think potentially Samurai Wallet has maybe lost a bit due to the Tor connectivity issues that users are facing, and I'm hearing that a lot of users are just when they open up their app It, it's obviously starts off on, by default over Tor, and the Tor network obviously this year hasn't been very favorable, it's been attacked, and so maybe Samurai Wallet has lost a little bit there because Blue Wallet's not too far behind them, with thirty-s, thirty-eight percent. So, you know, maybe, yeah, well, let's see what happens with, you know, those factors there. But BlueWallet is a, another very, very strong contender.

Yeah. And I think it's one of those things where, from hearing some of the BlueWallet developers speak, for example, Igor at, Baltic Honeybadger earlier this year, he was commenting about how it's not just Bitcoin Twitter echo chamber using it, right? There are people, there are like random people in, you know, African countries or wherever around the world who just use BlueWallet Wallet, and so, you know, it's, it's funny because there are times where wallets can be really criticized in, the online discussion, but they are very widely used out in, in the real world, let's say. So, you know, that's, that's where the rubber meets the road, right? So it's, it's important to consider that. So next one is gonna be contentious as well. What about the best mobile Lightning wallet? Okay.

So we had best mobile Lightning wallet, we had six hundred and fifty-three votes on this. The options were Moon Wallet, Wallet and Wallet of Satoshi, clear winner there with forty-seven or forty-eight percent, with, going to Moon Wallet, and next was Phoenix, and then, Wallet of Satoshi, and then finally Breeze. So yeah, that, that was the, you know, a lot of people have been sort of promoting Moon Wallet as a very, very easy way to get Lightning funds straight into your wallet, you know, instantly, and then, you know, i-it combines both on-chain and Lightning together. So I think that's probably, you know, one of the, you know, seamless processes, that people want to experience, and it's good for noobs. So I think that's probably why it's been promoted that much.

Back to the show in a moment. When it comes to securing our Bitcoin, we need Bitcoin hardware, and my favorite is the stuff over at CoinKite dot com. Most notably, they have the Coldcard. So this is a very versatile hardware signing device. It looks like a little calculator. You can use it to generate your private keys and to sign messages, sign transactions. It's got all kinds of features. You can use it as part of a single signature or as part of a multi-signature setup, and it's just really reliable. You can also, notably, spin up this device and initialize

And initialize the device that way, so I find that really comforting also. So if you wanna get your cold card, go to coincard dot com, use code livera for a discount. When it comes to Bitcoin block explorers, mempool dot space is the one to go to. When you are about to send your Bitcoin transaction, mempool dot space is a great site to check so that you can target your fee appropriately based on how quickly or slowly you are willing for your transaction to go through. So mempool dot space offers a range of features, you can see the mempool, you can see the You can see second layer networks like the Lightning Network, and you don't even have to trust a third party. If you want to, you can host it yourself. It's free and open source software. Now, if you are with an enterprise, Mempool dot space does have enterprise sponsors, so if you're looking for features like having a custom mempool instance with your company's branding or having increased API limits, it's a very popular block explorer, and so this is a great way for you to get that exposure. So if you're interested, go to mempool dot space slash enterprise. When it comes Big stack, Unchained Capital can help you with multi-signature. This can give you that peace of mind knowing that you can remove single points of failure from your setup. And not just this, Unchained have solutions that can assist as part of the inheritance process. So their new concierge onboarding program also comes with the new inheritance protocol. So that includes some step-by-step checklists, letters for the executor or trustee, inheritance seed phrase card, and a tamper-proof bag. So this can give you that peace of mind knowing not Not only are you securing your coins, but that you are smoothing the process to pass that down to your heirs. So if you're interested in this program, go to unchained dot com slash concierge, use code livera for a discount there. And now back to the show. Yeah. And, and of course, I know there'll be some listeners who are saying, "No, it's not a Lightning wallet. It's actually more like a Bitcoin on-chain wallet that can pay out a Lightning submarine swap." So just to explain what's happening, right? In practice, if you use MoonWallet and then you are making a Lightning payment, really what's going on in the background is it's almost like you are paying on-chain to Moon, and then Moon is actually paying your Lightning invoice for you. So because of that, and because of some of the RBF controversy as well, payment on Moon because they're paying out, let's say, five hundred dollars in Lightning or using a Lightning payment, and so Moon is saying, "Well, you're gonna have to wait before I make that payment because I need it to confirm into me before I send out the five hundred dollar light." And then people are in an awkward spot if they're like, "In an in-person exchange, I thought it was Lightning, right?" So I can understand that confusion, but at the same time, I like Moon and, you know, I, I sub- I promote it. I, I think the Actually do day to day lightning, then I tend to point them more towards Phoenix or Breeze personally. That's, that's where I'm at, because Phoenix and Breeze are what we might call natively lightning and non custodial. So they do make other trade-offs around that, of course. There's no kind of holy grail here, but it, I think, is more suitable for the native, if you're like actually spending and receiving on lightning, and you're actually doing less on-chain transactions that way. But if you're just like a total newbie who just needs to take their coins off Moon is a fair, and totally fine choice. That's how I see it. Yep,

fair enough,

fair enough.

Yep.

Now, mobile Lightning controller. So I guess we distinguish a little bit here, because what, what we're talking about here is like an app that helps you remote control your Lightning node. So who was the winner here?

That's right. So best Lightning node remote controller. The options were Zeus Wallet, Zap Wallet, and Spark. We also had four hundred and thirty-nine votes there, with the clear winner at pretty much eighty percent, with Zeus. So Zeus is great, it supports all, node implementations pretty much. It's got c-lightning support, it's got, oh, sorry, core lightning support, it's got LND, and I think it does even Eclair potentially. Yeah, I think they do. Yeah. So, you know, this wallet, you know, handles pretty much any node that you throw at it, and it's, it's got a great graphical user interface. New changes are constantly being updated, new features are being updated. Yeah, I, I really like it, and I My self-sovereign Lightning network payment gateway. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's also got NFC con- connectivity, so you can actually NFC tap, you know, for payments. but I think it all can, will be able to receive as well. so if someone puts down a Bolt card, for instance, you might be able to receive from there as well. Maybe, I'm not sure. Yeah,

I think it's only one way, so I'm not a hundred percent sure. Yeah, it's one of the two Tap to pay with Zeus yet, but I think you can, so I think you can tap to receive. I think it's, yeah, someone correct me or the other way around. Yeah, it's one of the two ways, it's not both right now. but yeah, I mean, I, I'm a Zeus user and supporter myself. I, you know, I donated on the project, I, and I promote it often. I even use it in my in-person demonstration videos often, just to demonstrate Lightning. Is that, was that the one with the, the beer incident

Another, when I was in El Salvador, I did another, Fergate video just for fun, and that one I think was with Zeus, so, you know. Okay. Alright. Yeah. Cool. Gotta bring it back. And, okay, so now desktop lightning remote controller. Yes.

so on your desktop, the options were Lightning Terminal, Rive the Lightning, ThunderHub, and LNbits. We had four hundred and sixty votes, clear signal, Rive the Lightning, with forty-seven percent there. They did a fantastic UI with, you know, the bells Again, supports, a lot of the node implementations or the two major ones at least, and yeah, it's a nice graphical interface, really easy to see things and, you know, make payments, open channels, all those sorts of things in a nice graphical way. Really, really like Ride the Lightning, but I also like ThunderHub as well. ThunderHub is, you know, a, a, another alternative. It has a nice, look and feel to it as well, and it integrates with other projects as well, like Ambospace and, you know, LN Orth And all those sorts of things as well. So, both are pretty cool, but Ride the Lightning, yeah, I like it, I like it a lot.

Yeah, and I mean, I, I use RTL myself with, my BTC Pay also, so yeah, can't really complain there. What about, Bitcoin Explorers or Blockchain Explorers? Yeah. Okay, so Bitcoin

Explorer, we had, this is the biggest turnout of the poll with eight hundred and seventy-four votes on here. And so the options were mempool dot space, Amboss, OXT

82% with Mempool dot space. I mean, I can't argue there. Mempool dot space is a really, really nice Bitcoin, explorer. you know, you get to see everything, and they've now just recently added Lightning support. Mate, hats off to that team, they've done exceptionally

well there. Fantastic, yeah. And, you know, I'm a user of Mempool dot space myself, and, I mean, the disclosure, they're, they are also a sponsor of my show, but, you know, I am a fan. And

Bitcoin implementation. So I think this one is kind of a bit, let's say tongue in cheek in a way, but okay, what was the best im- Bitcoin implementation? Alright, so we had six hundred and twenty-five

votes here. The options were Bitcoin Core, Knots, BTC-D, and Libbitcoin, and the clear winner here with ninety-one percent was Bitcoin Core. Tongue in cheek again. Yeah, as you said, it was just, you know, something that I thought was interesting, and I'd like to see who, who was using the alt-alternative implementations Yeah.

I mean, as far as I'm aware, most projects use Bitcoin Core, except for certain things. So from the top of my head, I can think of Wasabi Wallet, I believe they have Knots, which is the Luke Dasho version, and then LND has certain aspects where it's calling out using b t c d, right? So that's kind of-- Otherwise, basically everyone, every man and his dog is using Bitcoin Core, at least that's how it is currently, and, you know, there are debates in the community about whether there should be multiple imple- implementations It's too hard to make, cross compatibility or cross, implementation compatibility, and it's very important that the networks stay in sync. So, you know, yep. That's why it seems like pretty much other implementations seem almost like a rounding error, at least relative to Bitcoin Core, at least today, speaking today in terms of Bitcoin users today. Okay, so you've got the best no KYC platform.

Yeah. So we had six hundred and seventy-eight votes on this. The options were Bisk, Hoddle Hoddle, Robo- Sats and Peach, and clear winner here was, with fifty-three percent was Bisk, so a lot of the no KYC action, and the trades and the, the liquidity is all pretty much going to Bisk. Now, the surprising thing was, the, it was RoboSats, that came in at second, and so a lot of people are using it and it's really, really nice and polished, so I think, you know, I'd encourage people to check that one out for, you know, acquiring. Non-KYC Bitcoin. and then a new contender on the street was just Peach, so I think that's US based only, but it looks like it's got a nice mobile, you know, interface to it.

I don't think it's US, I think it is around the world, Peach. Yeah. Oh, okay, sweet, yeah, sweet. I think they are a Swiss company, but, they're, they're able to do it non-KYC. So, yeah, because, but I know, for example,

HodlHodl US based, yep, fair enough, fair enough. That's my guess anyway. So that's no KYC, okay. Now, node in a package, this could also get contentious, so, who, who won here? Very,

very contentious here. So the best node in a package, we had seven hundred and eighteen votes on the poll, but we actually had five options, and you can't do five options in, on Twitter, and so I had to drop one. And so obviously I got shat on by the person that I dropped, understandably. But, Miner, Umbrel, Startnine, and Ronin Dojo, and the clear winner here was Umbrel with forty point nine percent, and I think that probably comes down to ease of use, and beautiful, beautiful, user interface, and, you know, a, an all-in-one solution to pretty much everything that you need, and so, yeah, I, I, I wasn't expecting any different of a result. Having said that though, RaspberryBlitz, Startnine, gaining Some, more traction there, and I think Raspberry Blitz has been around for a very, very long time, and my, Minnode and Run and Dojo are probably on equal footing there as well. So both of these are very, you know, it, it's all across the board here. I don't think there's, you know, one clear, clear, clear winner like we have with, you know, some of the other projects, but people are trying new, implementations of their node packages, and that's

great to see. And continual improvement, I saw just recently the Umbrel guys came out with the option, and kind of related to what you're saying, they came out with the option to not use Tor and just go clearnet because, again, the difficulties with that, and they even offered the ability to, to use i2p, right? So it's kind of like, yeah, it's interesting that they are doing that. Now, I understand some people criticize them for not being FLOSS, and people, I know, there was the Run Citadel project that was basically started as kind of like an open source So nodules out there as well. That's right. So, you know, but they've all improved as well. Like I know Raspberry Pi's came out with a web interface and like Ronin Dojo did a big update on their UI, so they're all constantly improving. So that's cool to

see. And get this, Stefan, Mineo and Startnine have come out with an option, where you can buy a non-Raspberry Pi option. So Startnine obviously came out with their, really, really nicely specced computer, and Mineo also came out with a really spec computer as well. so that's great to see that computers with more grunt are doing the heavy lifting for, you know, these node packages. Fantastic to see.

Yeah, especially if it comes to Lightning and you're trying to be a routing node on a Raspberry Pi, it just, it just becomes really-- Yeah. You know, that's why you see like some of the, you know, people doing like professional nodes, they're using a VPS for the professional level infrastructure and reliability and so on. Yep. Yeah. And also 'cause they don't wanna dox their home

Around, the survey itself, but I mean, just kind of speaking more broadly about the space. So as we mentioned, there's this sort of, call it, Bitcoin Twitter echo chamber factor, right? How, how important is that? And, you know, like, because here, here's two angles, right? One angle is, oh, Bitcoin Twitter doesn't matter, it's just a bunch of irrelevant, irrelevant echo chamber people. But on the other hand, there are times that an important technology or project can become surfaced that way, and things that that community is talking about now become very

Maybe there's like, there's kind of an interesting angle where you can, you could make a case either way, right? I'm curious any reflections from you.

Yeah, look, I think, some of the stuff that goes on in the echo chamber is, yeah, it, it, it, it can be good in that, you know, we bring a lot of these projects to light. I know, Minnode, for instance, I, I found that very, very, very early on, when it just had basically Bitcoin Core and Lightning in there, and Implemented in there, you know, I, I did a whole series of guides on it as well, and so people take to that and they look at it and they try it themselves and it becomes, you know, a, a, a popular piece of software, I think that's sort of what's happened with Sparrow Wallet as well, the community just really stuck onto that one as quickly as possible and ran with it. I think that's what, you know, brings to surface some of the best ideas is, you know, having these projects of- Available as, you know, pages on Twitter that you can follow and you can get their latest up, updates and those sorts of things. And then obviously Bitcoiners know other Bitcoiners and they can refer to each other, they obviously talk and say, "Hey, look, I f- you know, I, I, I saw this, piece of software, what do you reckon? Give it a spin." You know, I, I get asked to review, sort of software all the time, so it's really good to see, that people are experimenting with, software when, when you are doing that though, you know, you don't wanna download something nefarious. So, you know, some of the key principles would be free and open source license, you know, well vetted, something like that's been around for a while. So, yeah, that's kind of, you know, what you wanna do. But as to whether or not the results would have changed, I think so, yeah. Like if, if this was done on, say, Reddit, I think maybe that whole echo chamber might have different opinions. That's probably

a good thing.

difference in, in terms of what the overall Bitcoin users are, right? Because I'm sure if we zoomed out and looked at the overall Bitcoin users, who are some of the, it might be like more Electrum wallet users, maybe Blockchain dot info, or maybe even Exodus, right? Like it's a shitcoin wallet, but there's a lot of Bitcoin, Bitcoin being spent using these shitcoin wallets. And so it's important to just so people are listening, they understand there's that distinction between what's popular on Bitcoin Twitter versus what's used in the network and kind of the broader world and how To, let's say, our circles view Bitcoin, you know? Agreed, agreed. Yeah. So this year we also saw some development around Fedimint and, for example, Cashu, which is-- So for listeners who are confused, so Fedimint is like the federated mint idea, so it's like this idea that you can have multiple, and then Cashu is a single mint, and these are Chelmin eCash. So you can have users who are a user of that platform, and they-- and the point is that they have a lot more privacy. So the, even platform don't necessarily know the balances of what those users are doing, and the idea is it's connected with Lightning. So, but what are the trade-offs, Stefan? No, no, but what,

what, what would be the trade-offs there? Would it be a bit custodial, would it?

Yeah, yeah, no, it is custodial. That's, that's absolutely the main, that's the main risk. And of course, that's probably the main thing, the, the rug, the rug risk is, certainly the main factor there. So I'm seeing

it How you're framing it, right? Because I think some people are trying to frame this like, "Oh, this is the alternative to using an exchange. That, okay, it might be more private, and maybe there's some way that people can get onboarded this way, or maybe there could be some services, I guess, to steal, man, right? To steal, man, their case, it might be something like currently custodial services might be able to upgrade their privacy in some ways like this. As an example, Stacker Dot News, right now it's custodial, right? Like so Deposit, you know, five thousand sats, and you can tip, you know, articles and so on, and people tip you, so you can-- But it's custodial right now, so it is already custodial. Could that-- I guess the argument is, could that be, could something like that be built using this kind of tech that's more private? I don't know. What do you think?

Well, look, f-f-for me as someone who is pretty much, I-I-I am one hundred percent al-uh, all about self-custody. For me, look, if In my actual wallet. I don't keep more than fifty to a hundred bucks on there, okay? So that I am more around, you know, if I did want these features, I'd only be putting at this point in time a hundred bucks max on there, because I know that the rug risk is potentially real, right? So I wouldn't be putting life savings on there, I wouldn't be putting, you know, large sums of money in there, I, you know, these sorts of things, I probably wouldn't be doing. But I can see that, you know, Use case for private transactions, and of course, you know, if you accept those trade-offs, sure, okay. But for some people, that might just not be a starter. They might not want to give away their, you know, their, their keys to somebody else, and that might just not be an on-starter. And I, I, I see both ways there. But for me, again, I think it's probably just, I'd, I'd probably, you know, I'd check it out, but I wouldn't be checking out more than a hundred dollars in there,

I'm curious how you would see it then for, let's say a total new user, like, if, if somebody could say, "We could onboard a new person using some kind of Fed Mint or Cashu sort of style mint, and they have no Bitcoin whatsoever, like they don't have a stack, they've not done anything, okay, they just got started." So the idea is maybe this is how they're getting their first Bitcoin, and then now, then later they can upgrade later, that kind of thing. Okay, sure. But, I mean,

Stephan, I, I don't know. Look, if, if you look, if you-- We have been beating the drum on, getting your coins off the exchange. People don't upgrade. Like, we know this, we know this, Stefan. People don't upgrade their setups until they get rubbed. That's when it's too late, right? So people will probably start off with fifty bucks, hundred bucks, then that magically turns into a thousand, that might then magically turn into five grand, ten grand, and then rug occurs. We've- And they've all been meaning to go, "Oh yeah, yeah, you know, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it," and they just don't. I don't know, man. I'm not, I'm not quite convinced on that argument that will-- Yeah. It's easier to switch. 'Cause we've seen, we-- Like, we've been beating the drum with self-custody. No one freaking did it. FTX went down. Hey, lesson learned.

Yeah. So I, I mean, I certainly, I take your point there. Certainly The guy behind Bitcoin Akashi. And so he mentioned that he's onboarding some of them with, with Custodial. However, the shop owners do have hardware wallets or si-- hardware signing devices, and for their main stack, they, they do, they are transitioning some of that out. So, y-you know, I think it kinda depends who, who's, who's doing the onboarding, but I certainly, I certainly think- Right now, blocks are really empty, or not empty, but they're pretty, you know, you can get, you know, so for now, is it like a premature optimization, right? Like are we trying to get people to this thing when like, hey, you can get 'em on chain right now, you can get 'em non-custodial right now. Exactly. Exactly. So for me personally, I'll always be encour-encouraging them like non-custodial for onboarding, but maybe in the future, five or ten years down the line, I don't know,

maybe on that yet, but I would say for now, today, maybe it's premature optimization. Maybe you just get them non-custodial to start with. And that's what I would, I would say as well.

That, that's my, like as of today, once Taproot is going through all the time, you know, you can onboard users, and we should be encouraging as many Bitcoiners to go self-sovereign, hold your own keys, run your own node. I think that has been, it, it would have to be the theme for twenty twenty-two, surely. Hold And so I, I'm hoping that that will continue for a few more years, Stefan. Maybe, maybe, when I'm wrong in, you know, twenty sixty or something, that, you know, once, once per byte transactions may not go through, then maybe we can start to think about alternatives, and maybe that alternative is Lightning. But, yeah, okay, fine, fair enough. But then, like, l-l-let's, let's, let's look at the situation what we have right now and then go from that. And I think the answer is self custody all

I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you. I think, it's more just assessing the situation for people or trying to correctly steelman the case that the Fedimint or Cashu people might, might make, right? Now, speaking of Lightning, as we were just mentioning, are there, you got any thoughts there? Like, I, I'm curious, your view on payment reliability, adoption, usefulness of Lightning, you know, over this year. Have, have you seen improvements there?

Yes, Stephane, I have seen improvements. I definitely have. I went to the Bitcoin Bush Bash back in November. I was expecting, so I was gonna sell, I was selling some books, just over the Lightning Network, payments ranged between fifty to a hundred dollars around that, you know, multiple times, and every single one went through first time. I did about maybe, you know, I wanna say seven to eight transactions there, every single one went through first go. And custodial or non-custodial? Like obviously non-custodial your side, but so for- My side, obviously non-custodial, but it was a range, it was a mix. Some had Zeus, some had, Moon, some had, some others, wallet of Satoshi was in there, so yes, it was a range, and I think that it was, it, it worked, it worked every single time, and I was just blown away because I was expecting to go, "Oh, this, here we go again," you know? So, yeah, no, reliability has significantly improved, in my opinion, or just based on my experience. obviously But for me right now, as of November twenty twenty-two, I was impressed. November, yeah, twenty twenty-two. Oh, you mean, but that was when you did it, yeah? Yeah, that was when I did it in November, and it was fine, it was great. So yeah, Lightning, you know, I, I'm really getting more-- Like I was, I was pretty bearish on it at, at, at a time when just payment failures and, you know, error messages and red screens and, oh, mate, it was the pits. But now I'm starting to

Yeah, and that's, that's really cool to see. I think more and more people using it is a good thing for the network. I understand, and, and this is probably another area where there were some people criticizing as well, they were saying, "Oh, look at these people just sending lightning to lightning from like one fiat institution to another, right?" So for example, people criticizing, say Strike or Coin Corner or things like this because they were doing payments into Africa or, let's say, Coin Corner from Europe and U, UK into the Philippines, but they were using the I understand where some people would say, "Oh, that's controversial, why are you trying to promote fiat payments?" But at the same time, more people using Lightning is arguably a good thing. It's helping raise the awareness of Bitcoin and Lightning in a way and makes the, the network bigger and more viable in that sense. So I'm seeing a benefit there. I see it as overall, that's a positive, right? But what, what do you think?

Yeah, it'd have to be, right? More people on Lightning network, more people transacting,

you know, a Hold on, what are we comparing against, right? If, if you had the banks and all of your transactions in there versus a Lightning network, you'd be like, it's, it's chalk and cheese in terms of just privacy there, right? So I think more people transacting in a peer-to-peer fashion, ideally non-custodial, ideally without censorship, I, I think is a beautiful thing, and I think the Lightning Network enables that.

Yeah. And I think it's important to compare there, right? Because I might, I think I tweeted something out, or I, I think I And I think one of the guys from Nim, Harry, came back saying, "Oh, look, see, Lightning's not private, da da da." But I was saying, "Look, would you agree it's more private than a credit card?" And then he was, and then he was like saying, "Oh, look, but look at this research showing that a global passive adversary or like a top one percent Lightning node could deanonymize fifty percent of the payments on the Lightning network or something." It's like, do you understand that right now these people are using a credit card where every per-- Non-custodial or self-custodial Lightning wallet or node, it's massively better. It's a massive improvement. So I think sometimes like the privacy nitpickers, yeah, we need to

be a little bit more, you know, just understanding of the, the, the, the nitpicking as you was, as you were alluding to, is just more be, okay, look, let's take a step back. What are we competing against? We're trying to compete against credit cards and all those sorts of like financial institutions and the privacy, the, like, the, the invas Theirs versus what we currently can get on the Lightning Network, it's chalk and cheese, in my opinion.

And I think maybe the, the, his argument was like, "Oh, people are being sold like a false sense of security or a false sense of privacy." Which, okay, fine, yeah, you're not hiding from the NSA using the Lightning Network, you're not Edward Snowden on the Lightning Network, you're not James Bond, but are you better than the current system with credit cards? Yeah, probably. I think it is. I think it's very fair to say that,

That out. So I think then probably the other question I have for you is, do you believe we will see more of a Lightning first approach, right? Like for low value or in-person commerce, will we see Lightning first next year?

next year? I don't know. If one sat per byte keeps going through, I'll still buy my coffee for on-chain. I don't know. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, okay. So, it really-- So, so when I go onto the Lightning network, it's because I think that the on-chain is just too c That's why I have my Lightning network set up, right? So whether it will be a first option, maybe, maybe in person, maybe. But for me, commerce over the internet, when time isn't that critical, like I don't need a pay, pay, pay and tap and pay experience, then I think on-chain presents a fantastic option there.

Yeah.

Fair enough. and so yeah, will we see that continue? I, I, I think so. But will we see more, more and more people get onto the Lightning network? Yeah. I, I think we'll do both.

Yeah, and, certainly I agree with you. In, in the cases where the timing isn't of the essence, then, yeah, on-chain it still works, right? It's fine. what I'm seeing is more like in the cases where the time does matter more. Like a quick example, Jukemur, right, was, was telling a story about how in El Salvador, he was at the grocery store trying to pay with Bitcoin, and their payment system, the Chivo system at that time, defaulted to Bitcoin on-chain. Waiting for like thirty minutes or something, and then the, the line was backing up behind him because the, the checkout staff couldn't move the transaction forward until the thing confirmed. So it was just like not practical. Now, I think they have updated some of this now, so, you know, now you can more-- at least I think you have to, there's a bit of an education conversation you have to have to sort of say, "Hey, choose the lightning option so I can pay you straight away." But for an in-person context, it's, it's just night and day, right? For in-person commerce, but, you know, we'll, we'll see what happens next year, right? I, I, I'm hoping for

it. I'm hoping for it, yeah. I, I, I think there should be a, a lightning of approach, sort of first approach, when it comes to these in, in, in, in-person. It just makes the experience much better, just like, yeah. We have to compete with credit cards, right? Remember, Stefan? We have to compete with them.

Yeah.

So they offer tap and go, we

also need tap

Right, and I think if we're kind of stuck with like on-chain for in-person commerce, even for small, low-value commerce, it's, it's not gonna, it's not gonna fit the bill. It's not gonna work, no. Although, I mean, one other criticism I've, and maybe not a criticism, but just an idea, is this idea that some people don't spend Bitcoin until that's all they have left to spend, and so that's why they're happy to just keep using fiat. Of course, I'm happy to earn and spend and try to, try to live

it's gonna take time,

there. I think it's gonna take time, Stefan. People are just dumping their fiat bags, so, and, and there's an unlimited amount of fiat going around, so I think it's gonna take some time until this whole thing completely, decays. Yeah. I think that's probably gonna be a, a, a further while out before, you know, people start to use their Bitcoin as if it was the only thing that was left.

Yeah, totally fair. So any other thoughts or any other, you know, predictions or trends that you Keeping an eye on for next year? Yeah, look,

I think, I, I think honestly, a maxi is being born pretty much, you know, on a daily. ever since I think the FTX collapse and, you know, Terra Luna, and all that sort of stuff just went down, a lot of people are just starting to go, okay, well, you know, I, I wanna focus on Bitcoin. I don't wanna deal with all of these other, you know, events and drama. I just wanna focus on, okay, what, what is the problem What, what can potentially solve that? And I think when people are talking about transacting permissionlessly, when people are thinking about, you know, even saving, you know, I, I think Bitcoin presents somewhat of a, an option, definitely. And so people want to, should learn how to self-custody it and run their own Bitcoin nodes, and I am bullish on more people doing that, I

really am. Yeah, fantastic. Well, I think that's a great spot to finish up. Yeah, any final comments and where can people find you online? Just hold Hold your

own keys, run your own node, you know, do privacy best practices. people can find me at underscore k3t a n on Twitter and at Ministry of Nodes, which is, the company that I run. Basically, we teach you how to hold your own keys, run your own node, those sorts of things. so come book in a session, we'd love to chat.

Fantastic, thank you. I hope you found that show informative in terms of updates on what's going on in the space. Of course, this'll be the final episode for twenty twenty-two So I wish you all a happy new year, and I look forward to seeing you, whether that's out at the conferences next year or just taking part in the online discussion. So thanks again to sponsors of the show, thanks to everyone who supports me and shares the show with their family and friends, and thank you for being a listener. I'll see you in the citadels.