Super Testnet

Open source dev w/ bitcoin focus | supertestnet.org

bc1qefhunyf8rsq77f38k07hn2e5njp0acxhlheksn

Public Key

npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399s

NIP-57 Address

supertestnet@coinos.io

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5hsz9nhwden5te0vf5hgcm0d9hx2u3wwdhkx6tpdsjp24rw

Publishing to

nostr.mom

bitcoiner.social

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399s

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-06-01 17:59:19

- reply

One nice thing about vpns, and lnproxy, is that they stack. You can put multiple vpns in your network stack, so that first your traffic goes to VPN A and then the VPN B and then to your destination. You can do the same with your money: first it goes to proxy A, then proxy B, then your destination. No proxy knows if the node they forward your money to is the real destination or just another proxy.

2025-05-31 07:19:24

Peep this nostr thread.
#nevent1q…keyv
Big difference between lightning and monero: this random XMR user admits he doesn't have the resources to trace an LN payment. I, a random LN user, can provably trace an XMR payment. Anyone can, because monero is designed to be trivially sender-traceable.
Monero is surveillance money. I recommend using lightning instead.
My favorite part of the thread is where Kortik tries to identify the destination of my lightning invoice. He gets it wrong, of course, but he learns about trampoline routing along the way!
https://image.nostr.build/51a9ac0d8e2648071134f907990a6613275115380988922528d6083d9a26b824.jpg

2025-05-29 23:37:24

- reply

I like FCMP and it sounds like it does fix most of my monero criticisms
But it fixes them by achieving what we already have in lightning (a blob of indecipherable sender data that anyone could have produced), and it achieves it in a way that unnecessarily bloats the chain with big blobs that everyone has to store forever
Just use lightning, that's my recommendation
Re: the sender tracing his payment to the recipient in a post FCMP world, yes, even in that world (if it ever arrives) the sender will be able to identify the recipient’s pubkey, which is tracing -- it's the first step. I think it's a lot less useful in a post FCMP world because every future tx will reference that pubkey as a possible spender, along with every other pubkey, and I suspect it will be infeasible to eliminate enough decoys in that world. Exiting stuff!

2025-05-29 01:32:06

- reply

> this is optional transparency by design
It is "letting the sender trace his payment" be design and it gives chain analysts a great first step in tracing a series of monero transactions
> there is no concealment
That's the flaw
> i.e. not tracing
Only in bizarro world does the first step of a trace not count. In the real world, we "start at the very beginning, a very good place to start," to quote Mary Poppins. But in your world, apparently that is a terrible place to start -- it's not even real tracing (says you)! Question: then why do all the tracers start there?

2025-05-28 14:50:51

- reply

It's worse on monero than on LN. On monero, if I send coins to pubkey X, I know that pubkey has unilateral control over them for about 20 minutes (10 monero blocks) before they can possibly forward them to some other destination. If they do forward them to someone else, I can credibly accuse them of knowingly doing so and I can provide cryptographic proof that they had the coins at some point.
Not so with LN. Thanks to atomic swaps, if I send coins to invoice X, I don't know if the pubkey therein ever has control of those coins. If he is a routing node, the amount of time he has control of those coins is 0. I cannot credibly accuse him of knowingly forwarding those coins to someone else, because he too does not know the destination, and moreover, once the swap was entered into there was no way he could possibly stop it. Once you create an htlc, you no longer control whether it gets settled.
So it's very different. On LN, intermediaries have plausible deniability. On monero, mixers have no plausible deniability.

2025-05-28 13:54:22

- reply

> doesn't sound very impressive
What it sounds like to me a serious privacy flaw that lands people in jail
> it isn't tracing
It clearly is. Tracing a cryptocurrency payment is following it from its source to its destination. Monero makes this trivial for the sender, it provides him with a cryptographic proof-of-trace in every transaction (the view key). Lightning makes it impossible under some circumstances.

2025-05-27 20:09:45

- reply

DMing you

2025-05-25 22:25:23

Pro tip from Vegas: the Steak n Shake at Oyo hotel knows they are *supposed* to accept bitcoin but the new PoS terminals haven't arrived yet. The guy at the counter said you can pay with bitcoin at all the other Steak n Shakes in the city though.

2025-05-24 02:53:25

A lot of bad things started with putting pictures on the money
https://image.nostr.build/87217de06d5f86aafcbe79e11149db7d0d69adae54165e672d9c57989923a9ee.jpg

2025-05-23 23:18:44

- reply

Perhaps it says a lot then that "rando on the internet CAN trace a monero payment"

2025-05-23 23:17:39

Today I published what I think is a decent channel factory or coinpool design that requires no soft forks. Let me know what you think:
https://supertestnet.github.io/scewl/

2025-05-23 19:17:08

- reply

> this wasn't just about privacy
Figures -- he'd like to compare monero to bitcoin on every metric except the one it's for.
> Here's a challenge
I recommend doing my challenge before you issue a counter-challenge. Looks a bit sus.
> the OP was talking about spam
Your post contradicted itself on this point. The statement "spam exists [on monero]" is incompatible with the statement "only monetary transactions." The fact that few people bother to bypass your filters is probably just because few people care about monero.
The statement "small, 300kb blocks" is incompatible with the statement "dynamic to increase." Imagine if I pointed to a block like this one from two days ago (https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000000463103ac48ed3c8887e59ba7d0078683c4fa4913e7b) and said it proves that bitcoin has "small, 500kb blocks" but that they are "dynamic to increase to 4mb." The statements are incompatible because the first implies they can't increase and the second explicitly says they can.
The reason why the first sentence implies they can't increase is this: if you don't adopt that implication, then you're just commenting on the lack of usage in a particular block. Which is a pointless observation. Just because a particular block doesn't take up the max size doesn't mean the max size is temporarily lower. Monero's blocks do not have a max size, which is a centralizing force, and as for the "penalty" for creating large blocks, that's what fees are for. If monero had any volume, huge blocks would make it even more centralized than it is today.
> no mining centralization
Very funny
https://i.ibb.co/mVr37HYc/monero-pool-centralization.png
source: https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero

2025-05-23 17:52:23

- reply

Pitiful.
I challenge you to pay this lightning invoice and trace your payment to its destination:
lnbc10104970p1p5rpd26pp5hdcxfsd4esv23xlkhnrfvgz3h8xnakjfktp24tqvsg9ygn5uet4qdqqcqzdyxqyz5zzsp5pk7t9n6z83zdl65ls3kfc6vptnml7n8an4kgluyzv553tya26wps9qxpqysgqh6qwhk7rag2tuufwy2y69ws67jmqcwpvr6hd9wcu4jm4hzgzumvq680g5m2s4f0f66lzvydpmxpt79derf4w9phs2eazhr67p8ctrzgpjtc2nk
Tell me what pubkey controls the funds and what balance it holds.
I will pay a monero address of your choice and I will yell you what pubkey controls the funds and what balance it holds.
Deal? If you think monero's privacy holds a candle to LN let's put it to the test.

2025-05-22 03:56:00

Cypherpunks run nodes

2025-05-21 11:49:27

- reply

I don't think we will discuss monero at all

2025-05-21 08:40:28

- reply

I doubt it, I suspect we will discuss recent bitcoin privacy tech improvements and cutting edge research in that space without comparing LN privacy to monero. I don't plan to bring up monero and I doubt Seth does either, though I suppose it could happen if Wirdum or Spacebear want to provoke a bit of drama.

2025-05-21 03:57:19

- reply

I'm an influencer, Constant
My sofa is all I know

2025-05-21 03:39:43

My definition of an L2 is this:
- you can send btc to it
- you can do some transactions on it without touching btc's blockchain
- you can withdraw your btc from it
- no person or group can censor your withdrawal without controlling 51% of btc hashrate

2025-05-21 02:02:35

Peter Todd right now
https://image.nostr.build/88de44d1b809e29ccba16394c4f5a5031d7d4dbb82ac080d613f14dafea1eb8f.jpg
Context: https://x.com/peterktodd/status/1924517867652792342

2025-05-21 01:06:12

- reply

Per binance, we hit 109,588 in mid January of this year https://image.nostr.build/b816bc22f142c22901f85b42eaaf83ec6b0ec8a8c7dff8c672efe70469593a95.jpg https://image.nostr.build/b816bc22f142c22901f85b42eaaf83ec6b0ec8a8c7dff8c672efe70469593a95.jpg

2025-05-20 22:41:13

- reply

Correct. I don't think it's a put-down on coinjoins, it's just a way to highlight other tools too

2025-05-20 22:30:44

By the way, if anyone is coming to the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas (https://b.tc), @nprofile…22nz and I have a panel where, among other things, we plan to discuss recent advancements in payjoin tech. I hope to see you there!
https://image.nostr.build/dbbc4f78d2a1ea7931fca39050fcd0096f43b3a7ee2117fc10c2d1cef7e81962.png

2025-05-19 08:49:03

- reply

You can do it on Magma and Lightning Network Plus but I personally avoid using them because they require accounts whereas their competitors don't
I'd like to see an open source alternative to those where you *don't* need an account

2025-05-19 07:27:25

- reply

Here's a good starting point:
#nevent1q…7v44

2025-05-19 07:23:28

Looking for a cool hackathon project? Grow this list: https://supertestnet.github.io/list-of-channel-sellers/
Make an app for umbrel/start9 where node runners can advertise on nostr that they'll sell/lease you a channel and what rates they charge. Users can then buy a channel from a much bigger list.

2025-05-19 03:20:56

- reply

#nevent1q…jtaq

2025-05-19 03:20:15

- reply

The function that caps the supply is called GetBlockSubsidy()
It is currently located at line 1942 of the file validation.cpp:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/7710a31f0cb69a04529f39840196826d0b9770ab/src/validation.cpp#L1942

2025-05-16 17:54:53

- reply

That's what I'm thinking. I believe mutiny wallet creates a new pubkey for every channel it requests, and the transLND project shows that you can spin up new pubkeys on LND and pretend those belong to your node, so I think its possible, at least on lnd

2025-05-16 09:09:07

- reply

I doubt it. I rushed this project to the "finish line" (by my standards) because I thought of another one and now I'm psyched to do that one
(Hint: it's PTLCs)
So I probably won't do anything further with this one for quite a while

2025-05-16 00:01:25

- reply

Oops, I meant "with" not without

2025-05-15 23:59:59

- reply

I am aware of 7 accountless markets and 3 additional ones that require an account. I list them here:
https://supertestnet.github.io/list-of-channel-sellers/
The more the merrier! The next best thing to a decentralized protocol is a coordinated one without as many independent coordinators as possible

2025-05-15 23:39:20

- reply

The inventor says otherwise:
#note17m0…ggw5

2025-05-15 23:38:02

- reply

it does?

2025-05-15 22:50:47

This deserves more attention, it lowers the barrier for anyone to be an LSP and thus helps make the lightning network more robust:
#nevent1q…xqnp

2025-05-15 22:45:23

- reply

If you want to start your own bitcoin exchange, is is easier than ever to deploy a robosats coordinator:
https://github.com/RoboSats/robosats-deploy
You can make money, virtue signal, and improve privacy all at once! Consider this a call to action
More instructions here: https://github.com/RoboSats/robosats/blob/main/setup.md

2025-05-15 22:31:23

- reply

You horrible, horrible knotsii!
Spammers are people too, you know!
https://image.nostr.build/88de44d1b809e29ccba16394c4f5a5031d7d4dbb82ac080d613f14dafea1eb8f.jpg

2025-05-15 21:51:54

Knots Analytics: How Many Sybils?
https://image.nostr.build/e42058c61f768da673476ec9b0cb01325dc8e580110a5e68dc1443052e7c6573.jpg
Attached is a cool chart from Coindance re: the number of nodes in the past couple of months.
You can see an uptick in Knots nodes (the lower green line) at the beginning of May. Meanwhile, at that time, the "total" node count (the top line) was basically flat, while the count of Bitcoin Core nodes started to fall. This indicates organic choice by about 1500 users to switch from Core to Knots.
Then, around May 10, we see evidence of a spike: total node count AND the Core count start increasing in lockstep. This indicates that a significant number of nodes (500 or so) got spun up around that time and were all Core nodes.
Are these sybils? Probably a few are, but most of it is just probably noise -- the total node count barely exceeds the range it was in before.
In short, these charts provide evidence that Bitcoin Knots growth has been organic, and there may be a few sybils spinning up Bitcoin Core nodes in response, but not that many.

2025-05-15 21:29:00

- reply

This is really cool! Can you make a demo video? I would love to share this work with others

2025-05-15 20:55:19

Bitcoin exchanges are starting to take stances on the op_return drama
Apparently they see an economic advantage in taking a side
Which means there's an economic incentive to take the other side: who will be the first exchange that runs Knots? You may get thousands of users!
Context: https://x.com/erickuhn19/status/1922671059943166268

2025-05-15 20:21:04

- reply

Great suggestion! I changed the warning to this:
Warning: for science only! Do not use this with real money. I only coded the "happy path" and there are lots of edge cases where you can lose funds, including if your internet connection is poor.

2025-05-15 20:07:35

- reply

Today Ocean mined 3 blocks, and by dividing 3 over 144 I learned Ocean has 2.1% of hashrate
But that's only a reliable metric if they consistently get that many blocks per day (or more). Otherwise it's probably just luck.

2025-05-15 17:56:14

- reply

When you make one! The code is free, do your thing!

2025-05-15 08:18:18

- reply

Lnproxy did it before me but now it's easy to do it on a phone without needing to run a node
But it's not ready yet, it's just a PoC

2025-05-15 07:20:26

- reply

I managed to do it once by using lnproxy.org as a middleman
I created an invoice in lnd, wrapped it at lnproxy.org, and then paid the wrapped invoice in lnd
It didn't know it was paying itself!

2025-05-15 00:47:41

My latest invention is Lightning Blinder: privacy software for the lightning network
Check out the video, I'd love to know what you think!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWBX68_2TQo

2025-05-15 00:35:33

- reply

It requires you to create an account first
That is bad, they don't need an account so the only reasons for that are (1) to collect my info (2) to sell my info (3) to spam me
No thanks, I just used one of their competitors that doesn't require an account

2025-05-15 00:34:29

- reply

would be a lot cooler if I didn't have to
I opted to use one of their competitors precisely because the friction was lower, no need to create an account, log in (even "log in with node") and then wonder if they're gonna spam me or sell my info later

2025-05-14 22:11:17

- reply

I made a list here:
https://supertestnet.github.io/list-of-channel-sellers/

2025-05-14 21:37:59

- reply

They don't work unless you have an account
I've asked them to remove this requirement here:
https://x.com/SuperTestnet/status/1922766991061819817

2025-05-14 21:23:46

- reply

https://image.nostr.build/b8546b6fa03e18b394073be4c4c5d4b9fa84645684c53f89a59ca7a85b95431c.jpg

2025-05-14 21:23:01

Is there a list of services that sell/lease channels? I want to rent an LN channel for my latest project and used to use these services:
- Bitrefill [but they stopped doing it]
- Deezy [but they stopped too]
- Voltage [they require an account now]
- LNBig [only option left?]

2025-05-14 21:19:09

- reply

> 9% of node runners prefer a single-contributor
I wonder whose fault that is?

2025-05-14 20:57:08

"Do the Knots nodes matter?"
Some are saying it doesn't matter that 9% of bitcoin nodes are running Knots now because they probably don't have any economic weight. E.g. did Coinbase announce they are switching? Or some big mining pool? No.
But they do matter. Here's why.
There's not a good way to know how much economic weight the Knots users actually have. It's easy to assume something like "Well, major infrastructure providers haven't said they are switching to Knots, so all of these people must just be raspberry pi users LARPing as if they matter."
But (1) it's possible for someone major to switch without announcing it (2) it's possible that a lot of these Knots users run small businesses, and if so, that can quickly add up to a significant amount of economic weight.
I don't think there's a good way to know but there's another factor to consider: the Knots people are running a couple thousand nodes, and even if they only represent 10% of the people upset with Core, that means tens of thousands of people are now part of a vocal minority.
If this minority proves to be persistent, people who *do* have economic weight will be economically incentivized to serve that community and advertise to them, and part of their messaging could be "Look, we're running Knots too! Support us by buying our shirts & hats & VPSs & whatnot!"
So even if the majority of these people *are* LARPers, and even if their hobby nodes are meaningless by themselves, it can result in people who do have economic weight joining that community for self-interested reasons -- and then suddenly there *is* economic weight in that community.

2025-05-14 20:45:09

- reply

there's also not a good way to know how much economic weight the Knots users actually have
it's easy to assume something like "Well, major infrastructure providers haven't said they are switching to Knots, so all of these people must just be raspberry pi users LARPing as if they matter"
but (1) it's possible for someone major to switch without announcing it (2) it's possible that a lot of these Knots users run small businesses, and if so, that can quickly add up to a significant amount of economic weight
I don't think there's a good way to know but there's another factor to consider: the Knots people are running a couple thousand nodes, and even if they only represent 10% of the people upset with Core, that means tens of thousands of people are now part of a vocal minority.
If this minority proves to be persistent, people who *do* have economic weight will be economically incentivized to serve that community and advertise to them, and part of their messaging could be "Look, we're running Knots too! Support us by buying our shirts & hats & VPSs and whatnot!"
So even if the majority of these people *are* LARPers, and even if their hobby nodes are meaningless by themselves, it can result in people who do have economic weight joining that community for self-interested reasons -- and then suddenly there *is* economic weight in that community.

2025-05-14 20:16:02

- reply

Not that I'm aware of
If there are ways, they are probably bugs. I imagine that if an LN protocol dev found out there was a way for a third party to identify what backend an LN node was using, they would try to fix that, because it leaks information that is none of the third party's business
That said, you can have some confidence that the LN node must use a backend that supports segwit, and there may be other info you can glean

2025-05-14 19:28:52

Knots broke 9% but its growth on the network seems to be slowing https://image.nostr.build/e5d5683cfc6d75030cca482fd27e73634ef967bea647299523bfce1a1257350d.jpg

2025-05-12 17:24:56

- reply

Some of the knotsis might be amenable to that but so far they only control 8.7% of the network
Let's see if that number continues to grow and then I'd like to more seriously propose reducing datacarrier limits at the consensus level

2025-05-12 17:10:33

- reply

> it doesn't make sense that the difference would be significant, persistently. Why would a miner not just mine txs that are more profitable?
For the same reasons I gave above: mining spam harms the goose in the long term, and some miners want the goose to stay healthy so that it keeps producing golden eggs. True, some are more interested in short term profits and do not really think about the long term effects. But I prefer to remedy this through education and persuasion.

2025-05-12 16:36:38

- reply

> for zero benefit
I dispute this. When most users censor spam in their mempools, it pushes up the cost of getting spam mined. I think that reduces incidence of spam to an appreciable degree. This is a benefit and it comes with additional benefits, like reducing the centralization pressure spoken of in my slippery-slope post ("Spam-filled blocks lead to...a network [that]...is centralized.")
I want to weigh my proposed upsides against your proposed downsides, not just ignore them. Do my upsides outweigh the centralization pressure you speak of? I think so. At least up til now, it seems like the centralization pressure created by private mempool usage so far is marginal. The extra income accrued by those miners is tiny compared to their "regular" income. But the costs imposed on spammers is relatively massive: their costs double or sometimes even triple.
Similar considerations apply to fee estimation: very few fee estimation tools "only" look at what's in your mempool, and so far no one has complained that they couldn't get their transaction mined. If it eventually gets to that point I would support removing the filters but I see no evidence that it is a serious risk.
I am not familiar with your point about compact blocks. Can you elaborate or link to somewhere this point has been discussed at greater length?

2025-05-12 16:06:35

- reply

Why does permissionless makes it ethically wrong to discourage behavior X? Just because someone *can* do X does not mean X is good. If I think X is a bad choice then it seems perfectly fine for me to discourage it.

2025-05-12 15:43:13

- reply

bitcoin purifier would kick me off of bitcoin, harming me even more than the spam does

2025-05-12 15:01:45

- reply

> If there are transactions that actually harm the network
Spam harms the network
#nevent1q…t9j7

2025-05-12 15:01:04

- reply

- Spam-filled blocks lead to spam-filled nodes
- Spam-filled nodes aren't worth syncing
- Fewer node syncers leads to fewer node runners
- A network with few node runners is centralized
- A centralized cryptocurrency isn't worth using
- An unused cryptocurrency isn't worth mining

2025-05-12 14:07:51

- reply

Bigger block sizes and spam
Two things that hurt miners in the long term but feel good for them in the short term
You know what else feels good short term? Cutting up the goose to get the golden egg a few hours early

2025-05-12 13:26:43

Me: The miners shouldn't mine spam
Them: Um, the miners obviously want the fees, they will follow their incentive
Me: The farmer shouldn't cut up the goose that lays the golden eggs
Them: Um, the farmer wants the golden eggs, he will follow his incentive
Same energy

2025-05-10 15:14:30

- reply

I was on there earlier this season:
https://www.youtube.com/live/VlP6AjM28hY?si=xgQRZTkDDNLJ67AY
I was also on there last season:
https://youtu.be/N2AR0mMJMho?si=nCqkhzgJMGf6Gz9h

2025-05-07 14:21:47

- reply

Oauth is good
Nauth is better
But "no" auth is best of all

2025-05-07 13:54:57

- reply

Yeah but you're not lazy
Most would-be spammers are lazy and poor
They don't spam if it takes work or costs are high
If you make it easier or lower the costs, you get more spam
The filters make it harder and that raises the costs

2025-05-06 18:25:03

- reply

I support a soft fork to make the max op_return 0 bytes
I also support a soft fork to make a new witness field ("witness2?") where users are welcome to store up to 32 mb of spam per transaction
People who don't want to store this spam can just not run the new software. We learned from segwit that you can ensure backward compatibility by just not sharing the new witness data with people who don't flag their support for it.

2025-05-06 18:12:01

- reply

For spam less than 150 bytes, here is the tier list:
Lowest cost option: unfiltered op_returns
Middle cost option: unspendable outputs
Highest cost option: private mempools
I support the filters because they push the cost of spam up the tier list

2025-05-06 16:51:23

- reply

That's what op_return_bot uses. They still have to charge extra.

2025-05-06 16:50:38

- reply

Using unspendable utxos to store spam costs a couple of bucks more than using an op_return. The deterrent effect of raising the cost in this way outweighs the cost of storing unspendable utxos, in my opinion. True, unprunable spam is a worse kind, but you have to be quite motivated to do it thanks to its higher cost of production, and the result us much less spam overall. I think that's a good thing, it highlights the filters' deterrent effect. But if we remove that, the effect reverses: we get less "unprunable" spam (yay!), but at the cost of having way more prunable spam, and that seems worse to me.

2025-05-06 08:15:55

Everyone saying filters "don't work" because spammers are just using op_return_bot to get around them? Yeah, op_return_bot has to charges double the regular fee rate or its bypass doesn't work reliably. This is a huge deterrent. The filters work.
https://image.nostr.build/6fd148c9789b879204f4e4cec37afc97e7888bed1cc8edbaf8ae50fac519e73a.jpg
Source: https://github.com/benthecarman/OP-RETURN-Bot/blob/master/app/controllers/InvoiceMonitor.scala

2025-05-06 00:06:57

- reply

2025-05-03 17:06:33

- reply

I like monero, I think competition is good

2025-05-02 21:12:31

- reply

Turns out it was dumb, because I forgot that you have to commit to data to the control block in a prior tx, so in that sense it's just as bad as an inscription. You could get around this by putting the data in the taproot annex, but that is non standard so it would also require relaxing the anti-spam rules, which I don't want to do.

2025-05-02 20:59:49

Apparently, Citrea decided not to put their spam in inscriptions because inscriptions have to be "unwrapped" in a second transaction. When the data is less than ~150 bytes, it's cheaper to put it in unspendable outputs, despite getting no witness discount.
I think they could get the witness discount and still avoid a second transaction by putting the spam in the control block. It lets you add up to ~520 bytes of spam by encoding your data as merkle leaves, each of which can be 32 bytes. No extra tx required, AND you get the witness discount.

2025-05-02 20:43:44

- reply

I checked the Core Lightning github and multipath payments are "on" by default there too. See, for example, this issue: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/issues/3926
It involved an error report where a user encountered this entry too many times in their error logs:
"Detected large payment, splitting into 100 sub-payments"
I checked the Eclair github too and multipath payments are "on" by default whenever trampoline routing is used (which is the case in Phoenix, which always uses Acinq as a trampoline node)
https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair/blob/826284cb277c28c7eef14aa275f3d6e3255c8e66/eclair-core/src/main/scala/fr/acinq/eclair/payment/send/TrampolinePaymentLifecycle.scala#L112

2025-05-02 20:08:14

- reply

> Multi path payments is optional for every wallet I've tried that even has it available
Which wallets have you tried? It's built into LND and turned on by default. So any wallets based on LND should just do it.
E.g. most custodial wallets as well as most nodes-in-a-box (Umbrel, Start9, etc.), plus many mobile phones like Breez, Zeus, Blixt, Bitkit, and ShockWallet.
Multipath payments are also turned on in electrum by default and I suspect they are turned on in the other implementations by default too
https://image.nostr.build/a66aa213f9fba4086879fea4a6d47b531a6f4c9ad0a326509e1e222a1a655a38.jpg

2025-05-01 19:47:34

Nate says:
"I don't understand why it matters how blocks get filled. Use lightning for basic spending if you want to use bitcoin as money. If you can't afford to, use ecash until you can. As for ease of running a node, a 4tb drive gets cheaper everyday. should be good for a decade or two."
Everything after the first sentence seems spot on. Also, I like the idea of reducing the cost of using lightning so that poor people can acquire self custody faster. Creating multiple channels in a single utxo seems like a promising way to do that.
https://x.com/beeforbacon1/status/1917881581257023528

2025-05-01 09:54:09

- reply

> He's wrong about unencrypted receiver (or meant something else)
I meant what I said: monero does not encrypt the receiver. If it did, monero devs could tell me what encryption standard they use (in lightning, we use the Sphinx encryption standard specified in bolt4) and they could point me to the code where the recipient's key gets encrypted (in lightning, that code is here: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/b068d79dfbd2f583d890fd605953d0d4fb897a27/htlcswitch/hop/iterator.go#L114)
Monero does not encrypt the recipient's public key -- it gets published in plaintext on the blockchain -- so the protocol does not specify any encryption standard for that and there is nothing in the codebase where it gets encrypted.

2025-05-01 09:44:17

- reply

I like that I can point out how lightning fixes a privacy attack vector and the response is "ok but it doesn't fix ALL attack vectors -- there's probably some other one it's vulnerable to."
Yeah, probably. But even if other attack vectors exist, that's no reason not to fix this one. I think monero should fix it too, and I am glad FCMP is being worked on to hopefully do that.

2025-05-01 09:40:59

- reply

> You sure it's final? So is it still there?
I am not sure anymore, but I don't think that matters. By "final destination" I don't mean" it never moved again." When I "arrive at my final destination" via Google Maps, it does not imply that I will never leave that place. It just means I am done moving for purposes of that trip. When I sent my money to you, the "trip" was getting the money into your address. I know I did that, so the trip was finished -- it got to its final destination. If you moved it out again afterwards, that is a separate trip and is unrelated to mine.
> How are you sure the address on my profile is mine either?
I don't. But I know it's the one you told me, so that's good enough for me.

2025-05-01 09:35:12

- reply

> I trying to understand lightning privacy more.
Great! I hope I can help.
> When I provide someone with a lightning invoice do I not reveal to them my lightning node?
No. Lightning invoices only contain a pubkey, they do not tell them which node is yours, for which they also need an ip address, and lightning invoices do not expose ip addresses. If, however, you run a routing node on clearnet, then they can look up your ip address, because routing nodes gossip that information along with their pubkey and their channels.
Also worth pointing out: if you opt to use blinded paths in your lightning invoice, the pubkey in that invoice does not belong to you. And the use of blinded paths is undetectable, so there's no way to know if a particular invoice is using it, meaning there is no way to know if the pubkey in any lightning invoice belongs to the real recipient -- it may just belong to one of the routing nodes and there is no way to find out.
> if I have even been sent sats from a KYC exchange or have otherwise linked my lightning node to myself for example through displaying a LNURL am I not doxed?
No, for the reasons pointed out above: there is no way for the service you used to know if the pubkey in your lightning invoice belongs to you, and even if they did know that, it is not linked to your node, because to link it to your node they also need to know your node's ip address, which is not shared when creating an invoice or when making a payment. Though if you are running a routing node on clearnet, then they do know it.
> Not just the current transaction but all future invoices can be linked to me?
No, because they don't know if the pubkey in your lightning invoices belongs to you, and moreover, you can use blinded paths to make it a different pubkey every time. If your wallet does not support blinded paths, you can use lnproxy.org to do it manually.
> From a node ID I can see all channels as well as a list of any closed channels and see all of the on chain BTC associated with that and follow their flows on the base chain
No. Only routing nodes gossip their channels. If you're running a regular node, your channels are not gossipped, and your node is also not gossipped, so someone with that invoice cannot map your node to your channels. They cannot find your node, and although there are techniques to find ungossiped channels, I am not aware of any techniques for finding ungossipped nodes or mapping ungossipped channels to them.
> Is my understanding correct and if so that makes lightning seem problematic to me for privacy.
I hope this clarification has helped.
> Is the point I am missing that the node ID in the invoice could be set up to just forward the payment to someone else? Is there a special way to create an invoice that does this?
Yes, many wallets do this by default:
- if you use Voltage LSP, it does this by default
- if you use Zeus wallet, you can enable it in two ways: either toggle the Zaplocker option, or toggle the Blinded Paths option
- if you use Coinos, you can enable it via the bolt12 option
- if you use Phoenix, you can enable it via the bolt12 option
- if you use any other wallet and it doesn't support bolt12 or Blinded Paths, you can use lnproxy.org to do it

2025-05-01 09:23:41

- reply

> doesn't mean law enforcement couldn't subpoena large node operators (?)
They could *try* to subpoena large node operators, but thankfully, routing nodes do not know the destination either. This is because the onion protocol lightning uses is designed so that routing nodes don't know their position in the route. Consequently, they do not know which node is the last hop, and cannot identify the recipient, who is the node after that.

2025-05-01 09:20:52

- reply

I answer most of these criticisms in the attached post.
One that I don't go over there is this one: "he slips in 'total balance' (he can't do the equivalent of this with Monero either)"
I can. The total balance of a "one time pubkey" on monero is never higher than its initial balance. It can get lower, but only if that address has shown up in a ring sig later. When I made that post, it hadn't shown up in a ring sig yet, and I know this because it didn't have 10 confirmations yet when I made the post, and monero doesn't let you spend an output til it has 10 confirmations. I have not checked to see if it has been used in a ring sig yet, but if it hasn't, then I know its balance is still the amount I put in it.
#note1pjs…zvem

2025-05-01 09:16:00

- reply

> You can't tell me the total balance in my wallet
True, just the one address
> or the final destination either
I can tell you that: it's the address I identified. That was the final destination.
> I know at least the public key of the first hop involved (potentially final destination)
True, but knowing the first hop does not get you very far, even though it is potentially the final destination. At least not in countries where you need more than a maybe to put someone in jail.

2025-05-01 09:10:41

- reply

Both of these stories start with exchanges telling the authorities what pubkey received their money. The fact that they *know* what pubkey received their money (and can prove it) is a design flaw in monero. Lightning fixes it.
Also, in both of these stories, after the money went from the exchange to the user's pubkey, the analysts watched the blockchain to see where the money moved next, and it went to another exchange with a probabilistic identifier marking the user's pubkey as a possible sender. This enabled them to contact that exchange and find out the user's identity, which led to an arrest in one case and better evidence for the charges in the other.
Lightning fixes this too, because not only does lightning not tell them what channel the money went into in the first place, but when it moves out of the channel, the analysts don't get to see that, because the transaction isn't broadcasted. So they never see the money go to an exchange and thus can never know to contact them to obtain the user's identity.

2025-05-01 09:05:32

- reply

Churning only sometimes works. This thread explains some of the reasons why: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/oz69hf/churning_why_is_too_much_detrimental_to_privacy/
One that I'd like to highlight is that Chainalysis tracing video shows a bunch of monero transactions where they managed to eliminate all of the decoys and identify the true spend. Churning makes another transaction where they have to do that in order to see where it goes next, which probably helps since they can't always eliminate all decoys (I don't even think they can *usually* do it), but your mileage may vary.

2025-05-01 08:52:37

- reply

Lightning fixes this.

2025-05-01 08:50:54

- reply

#nevent1q…8kkv

2025-05-01 08:50:25

- reply

> How did he do that?!?
I was able to do it because of a flaw in monero: by design, the sender knows what address he sends his money into and can report that info to authorities with cryptographic proof. This has led to multiple legal charges against monero users, see the attached thread for more info.
Lightning, of course, fixes this. #nevent1q…7m94

2025-05-01 08:21:03

- reply

> He is using the view key to see things that are available by design for the sender. ... This is actually a feature, not a bug nor a weakness.
It has led to at least two people getting arrested.
The Finnish guy in this article: https://cointelegraph.com/news/finnish-authorities-traced-monero-vastaamo-hack got arrested after a CEX used this "feature" to trace his payment from their exchange to his private wallet. This "feature" told them the precise pubkey which held the money, which allowed them to tell the authorities to watch the blockchain for that pubkey to show up in future ring sigs. When it did, they discovered that he sent it to binance, where they got his KYC info and arrested him.
Nearly the same thing happened to the Columbian guy in this video: https://v.nostr.build/D4Nzp22vRF35IRnz.mp4
Morphtoken sent his monero to his private wallet, and the authorities subpoena'd them to find out what pubkey they sent it to. They told them, and then they watched that pubkey to see if it showed up in future ring sigs. It did, and they kept tracing it forward til he sent a pair of transactions via a "poisoned node" (one run by Chainalysis) without a VPN, and these transactions sent the money to a centralized exchange and a point of sale system. They were able to get his KYC info from one of them (probably the exchange) and arrested him.
So the "it's a feature, not a bug" cope rings hollow. Lightning is way better for your privacy because the sender does not know what channel his money ends up in. He cannot give that info to authorities because he does not have it, so they do not know where to watch for future transactions, so they never get to contact an exchange and ask for more details about a particular inbound transaction. Lightning fixes Monero's "feature, not a bug" problem where senders can see where their money goes and then report that info to authorities.

2025-05-01 06:25:58

Another monero user took up my LN v. XMR challenge! I successfully traced my XMR payment and doxed his stealth address. Let's see if he can trace his LN payment and dox my channel!
https://x.com/SuperTestnet/status/1917826627259551777

2025-04-30 22:12:39

- reply

I think monero's ring signature tech is cool, I like that it enables something similar to coinjoins but without needing everyone to sign something. It's better than doing a coinjoin unless you can get more than 16 people to join you in your coinjoin.
I also think monero's amount encryption tech is cool and better than the encryption standard we use in the lightning network. I wonder if we can adopt it in the lightning network. Their encryption standard has a feature called "perfectly blinding" which means that even if the encryption mechanism gets broken in the future, the data you get is still worthless without the decryption key. Lightning uses a less robust encryption standard and if it gets broken in the future, it would suck very badly for historical transactions.

2025-04-30 21:39:51

https://image.nostr.build/a82973f702c2154884261c3f0c92b83b2cfde7c3ff2d613974dd338fc2df0095.jpg

2025-04-30 21:32:09

- reply

Sounds like this situation:
https://image.nostr.build/37a96add5c4afd208404fc1eb5d862c1e2ae4c2c0e4e556493e8cfa347719237.jpg

2025-04-30 19:50:53

Found out today that Lightspark's statechain model does NOT use a blinded server. It's not a privacy tool. That's sad. I recommend preferring Mercury's over Lightspark's if privacy is important to you.
https://i.ibb.co/C5gjcYm5/no-blinded-server.png

2025-04-30 19:24:25

- reply

> doesn't do the volume
How much volume does it have to do to count as a DNM? $1 million per year? $1 million per day?
> different threat model
How are they different?

2025-04-30 19:19:43

- reply

> different threat model
How are they different?
> not a DNM
Why not?