Strike and HRF posted three challenges with 1 BTC reward each

[nullama]

Strike and the Human Rights Foundation specified three challenges to improve lightning wallets' usability and experience. Any individual or team that solves each one them gets one Bitcoin as a reward.

Here are the challenges:

Challenge 1: Tip Jar

1 BTC to a FOSS non-custodial wallet that integrates BOLT 12 functionality to their wallet so that any user can simply generate a QR code from their wallet that can be shared with the world as a receive address or Lightning tip jar. The QR can be pinned to a Twitter profile, printed out and displayed in a store, for example. Senders scanning the QR should be able to pay X amount and that amount should arrive in the user’s non-custodial wallet. The QR code should not reveal the public key or IP address of the user.

Challenge 2: Stabilized Lightning

1 BTC to a FOSS non-custodial wallet that enables their users to “peg” their Lightning balance to the US dollar. We have no requirement for exactly how to do this, but suspect it will have something to do with contracts for difference. We realize this is an ambitious goal, and that submissions may be prototypes. We will leave it up to the board of judges to determine what will qualify as success. Bonus points if the mechanism that the user interacts with to “peg” their Bitcoin to USD is a slick slider.

Challenge 3: E-Cash

1 BTC to a FOSS non-custodial wallet that gives their users the option to enter into a (likely) custodial arrangement where Bitcoin can be sent to other users of that wallet using Chaumian e-cash. The arrangement should be such that the wallet administrators cannot know the identity of their users, their balances, or transaction histories. One suspects this would be a federated system, but all submissions will be considered.

This seems like a very interesting opportunity for the talented people here in this forum.

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[DooMAD]

Challenge 2: Stabilized Lightning

1 BTC to a FOSS non-custodial wallet that enables their users to “peg” their Lightning balance to the US dollar. We have no requirement for exactly how to do this, but suspect it will have something to do with contracts for difference. We realize this is an ambitious goal, and that submissions may be prototypes. We will leave it up to the board of judges to determine what will qualify as success. Bonus points if the mechanism that the user interacts with to “peg” their Bitcoin to USD is a slick slider.

Is it just me, or is Challenge 2 vague and confusing? 

Also, I would have thought recent events would leave people a little wary of attempting to create artificial pegs algorithmically.  I think I'd feel more comfortable if no one managed to claim the reward for that one.   

[BlackHatCoiner]

Is it just me, or is Challenge 2 vague and confusing?

That.

What's the benefit of pegging your Lightning balance to USD? And how exactly is this supposed to work? Like, creating 1 L-USD for each 3,000 Lightning sats? Doesn't make any sense. Bitcoin is free money; a currency on its own. And so is USD. Whoever wants to switch, utilize trading.

Challenge 3: E-Cash

1 BTC to a FOSS non-custodial wallet that gives their users the option to enter into a (likely) custodial arrangement where Bitcoin can be sent to other users of that wallet using Chaumian e-cash. The arrangement should be such that the wallet administrators cannot know the identity of their users, their balances, or transaction histories. One suspects this would be a federated system, but all submissions will be considered.

Reminds me of something. What can have possibly happened to that old soul, nullius, I wonder.

[hatshepsut93]

About Challenge 1 - I haven't checked on Lightning for awhile, is it even theoretically possible? You need to be online to generate payment request, because you need to get some of the senders data to generate it, right? So the only solution is to run your own server, at home or in the cloud, that would generate payment requests for you. Or is it possible to outsource it (though it would be centralized)

[LoyceMobile]

Challenge 2: Stabilized Lightning

1 BTC to a FOSS non-custodial wallet that enables their users to “peg” their Lightning balance to the US dollar. We have no requirement for exactly how to do this, but suspect it will have something to do with contracts for difference. We realize this is an ambitious goal, and that submissions may be prototypes. We will leave it up to the board of judges to determine what will qualify as success. Bonus points if the mechanism that the user interacts with to “peg” their Bitcoin to USD is a slick slider.

Is it just me, or is Challenge 2 vague and confusing?

It sounds like USDT, but running on the Lightning Network. The "tokens" can be non-custodial, but the dollar peg can only be centralized.

[n0nce]

Yes, I had read about these 'challenges'. In my opinion, they should rather be called 'commissions' or something like this.
Personally I thought about taking on 'challenge 1', but I'm generally not a fan of reinventing the wheel, so if I needed to code something like that for myself, I'd fork an existing project and add the one new feature.

What I don't understand is that Core-Lightning is already the software they're looking for: non-custodial and supports BOLT12.

See this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5383567.0

Code:

lno1pgyhgetnwss8getnws2q2m3sde3k283q2lpjlt6ze9es9je8c5xdxzcry7yz5flpwcnq84lxx2pcvu5v36hlqsyt78v7gcwx7az9aanft87whfedvey8gvm68f9uygrypnwe5r4578el5tlxznasdp8rjql9ulavwyadpxnmaeh9v0l4xc5lvq3qqrurq

I might still try to come up with something more user friendly than Core-Lightning, maybe based on Breez so it runs on a phone; however that application is pretty tied together with their 'intermediary node' and runs lnd, which still doesn't support BOLT12, as far as I know.

About Challenge 1 - I haven't checked on Lightning for awhile, is it even theoretically possible? You need to be online to generate payment request, because you need to get some of the senders data to generate it, right? So the only solution is to run your own server, at home or in the cloud, that would generate payment requests for you. Or is it possible to outsource it (though it would be centralized)

It is absolutely possible; it's been proposed a long time ago [1] in BOLT12 [2] and already implemented in Core-Lightning. Of course, your node is always online, that's the normal state for a Lightning node.

rustyrussell commented on 31 Aug 2020

An "offer" has enough information for you to reach out and fetch a real invoice from the vendor, through the Lightning Network itself, just like it would send a payment: no web server needed. Your wallet then pays the actual invoice

[1] https://bolt12.org/
[2] https://github.com/lightning/bolts/pull/798

[wagmi]

Strike and the Human Rights Foundation specified three challenges to improve lightning wallets' usability and experience. Any individual or team that solves each one them gets one Bitcoin as a reward.

It is a big challenge and a very nice reward but I guess, you need coder skillz to participate and of course, to win.
It's not possible to solve for normal people like us, unfortunately. 

[franky1]

Is it just me, or is Challenge 2 vague and confusing?  

Also, I would have thought recent events would leave people a little wary of attempting to create artificial pegs algorithmically.  I think I'd feel more comfortable if no one managed to claim the reward for that one.  

That.

What's the benefit of pegging your Lightning balance to USD? And how exactly is this supposed to work? Like, creating 1 L-USD for each 3,000 Lightning sats? Doesn't make any sense. Bitcoin is free money; a currency on its own. And so is USD. Whoever wants to switch, utilize trading.

all 3 challenges are not for fangirls to claim like some bitcoin puzzles announced over the years. its for devs to integrate LN functionality into wallets with different features AKA dev bounties, AKA sponsored features, AKA commission for developers.


the idea presumably.. is obvious
allow atomic swap between lets call it mcent and msat. so that people can do decentralised exchanging of pegged fiat to pegged bitcoin, off chain and off bank


everyone (apart from certain people who pretend they dont know) understands that LN is its own network that can bridge to many chains.
meaning the challenge in question is looking for Ln devs to make a USD stable coin segwit compatible and thus lock compliant to easily then allow a gateway into LN to then have it where LN channels can be cent/micro-cent based balance.
or any other way to get a USD stable coin to lock/bridge to LN

its not about converting a litecoin pegged 'lit' or a bitcoin pegged 'msat' to be worth some USD amount. its about having USD stablecoin locks/pegs to something like mcent balance in LN