New and Non-Custodial Wallet of Satoshi

[Pmalek]

Wallet of Satoshi has announced that they will be releasing a new wallet that will be non-custodial. It's still unclear if it will only be available in the USA or if users from other countries will also be able to use it. The target audience seems to be US customers.

Not much information is available at the moment besides that it will be a no KYC service.

https://x.com/walletofsatoshi/status/1923875750165479768

[_act_]

This will be a way to let people know about their custodial Wallet of Satoshi lightning bitcoin wallet which I can not advice anyone to download, unlike noncustodial bitcoin lightning wallet like Phoenix. It will be good if they can make their bitcoin lightning wallet a noncustodial one also or even before developing a noncustodial on-chain wallet.

[apogio]

Even though the original wallet is a custodial solution, I 've never hidden my good feelings for WoS.

I 've been trusting them with pocket-money for 2-3 years now (before moving entirely to Phoenix wallet) and I 've never had a problem with them. The fact that they have gigantic lightning nodes with massive liquidity and too many channels, allow for the transactions to be smooth, cheap and fast.

I am more than curious and excited to see what they 'll implement, and more importantly, how they will implement it.

[suzanne5223]

It's still unclear if it will only be available in the USA or if users from other countries will also be able to use it. The target audience seems to be US customers.

Not much information is available at the moment besides that it will be a no KYC service.
[snip]

Yes, the wallet will be available to everyone with the inclusion of the USA users, but they will need to go through KYC.
It is good, though, that they are working on adding the USA user to their service after the restriction that happened before.

This will be a way to let people know about their custodial Wallet of Satoshi lightning bitcoin wallet which I can not advice anyone to download, unlike noncustodial bitcoin lightning wallet like Phoenix. It will be good if they can make their bitcoin lightning wallet a noncustodial one also or even before developing a noncustodial on-chain wallet.

I supported what you said, but according to the tweet provided by the OP, the current wallet they are working on is a non-custodial one, and they promised it's going to be an innovative wallet that will provide a thrilling experience.
Let's wait until the wallet is released before we know if they are replicating the same mistake, since they seem to be promising something special.

[_act_]

It's still unclear if it will only be available in the USA or if users from other countries will also be able to use it. The target audience seems to be US customers.

Not much information is available at the moment besides that it will be a no KYC service.
[snip]

Yes, the wallet will be available to everyone with the inclusion of the USA users, but they will need to go through KYC.
It is good, though, that they are working on adding the USA user to their service after the restriction that happened before.

This will be a way to let people know about their custodial Wallet of Satoshi lightning bitcoin wallet which I can not advice anyone to download, unlike noncustodial bitcoin lightning wallet like Phoenix. It will be good if they can make their bitcoin lightning wallet a noncustodial one also or even before developing a noncustodial on-chain wallet.

I supported what you said, but according to the tweet provided by the OP, the current wallet they are working on is a non-custodial one, and they promised it's going to be an innovative wallet that will provide a thrilling experience.
Let's wait until the wallet is released before we know if they are replicating the same mistake, since they seem to be promising something special.

Yes, I know it is noncustodial. I am not disputing that. I only mean that it will help mislead more people to use their custodial lightning wallet.

As for where you quoted Pmalek, the noncustodial wallet is also not need KYC for United States customers. Go through the tweets again and you will notice that KaMeek Lucas Taitt posted about their lightning bitcoin wallet, Wallet of Satoshi quoted him and it was about the lightning wallet that it requires KYC only in United States, and not about the noncustodial wallet . Wallet of Satoshi later posted this about it:

Some are misreading this, so to clarify: There will be no KYC, on any Wallet of Satoshi, ever!

[goldkingcoiner]

Is it going to be open source or is there some debate on that? I cannot find any information on the tweet you linked.

[pooya87]

a new wallet that will be non-custodial
available in the USA or if users from other countries
no KYC service.

These are contradicting ideas!
A Bitcoin wallet needs to be decentralized, non-custodial and open source. If there is a way to limit the service to certain group of people and have a way to prevent others from using it, then it is centralized and shady. Even talking about KYC (whether it is needed or not) makes it weird. It is like saying "you don't have to fill KYC when using Electrum"!

[Pmalek]

Even though the original wallet is a custodial solution, I 've never hidden my good feelings for WoS.

I 've been trusting them with pocket-money for 2-3 years now (before moving entirely to Phoenix wallet) and I 've never had a problem with them.

I think that Wallet of Satoshi and Phoenix Wallet are two of the best connected LN wallets on the market right now. But I am saying that without having used either one. If I am paying for coffee or a burger than I don't think it's that important if the wallet is custodial. It would be worrisome if WOS (the custodial LN wallet) doesn't want to route your payments before you do KYC or provide other information about you and your money.

Yes, the wallet will be available to everyone with the inclusion of the USA users, but they will need to go through KYC.

Keep reading the discussion in that tweet. They explain that the wallet will not require KYC. It wouldn't even make sense because if you have full custody and the keys to your coins then you don't have to listen to people who are asking you to verify your identity.

How do you know it will be available to anyone? They haven't spoken about that I think. The announcement also has a map of the US in the background.

Is it going to be open source or is there some debate on that? I cannot find any information on the tweet you linked.

I don't think the current WOS is open-source. Probably this one won't be either.

These are contradicting ideas!
A Bitcoin wallet needs to be decentralized, non-custodial and open source. If there is a way to limit the service to certain group of people and have a way to prevent others from using it, then it is centralized and shady. Even talking about KYC (whether it is needed or not) makes it weird. It is like saying "you don't have to fill KYC when using Electrum"!

I don't disagree but it is what it is. We have an example from AQUA Wallet that talked a lot about their no-KYC crypto card in recent months and how great it would be. Turns out it has many geographical restrictions and Changelly is one of their exchange partners.

[ABCbits]

Since their current wallet aim for simplicity, i wonder how will they handle backup and restore which isn't trivial when opened LN channel is involved.

These are contradicting ideas!
A Bitcoin wallet needs to be decentralized, non-custodial and open source. If there is a way to limit the service to certain group of people and have a way to prevent others from using it, then it is centralized and shady. Even talking about KYC (whether it is needed or not) makes it weird. It is like saying "you don't have to fill KYC when using Electrum"!

I don't disagree but it is what it is. We have an example from AQUA Wallet that talked a lot about their no-KYC crypto card in recent months and how great it would be. Turns out it has many geographical restrictions and Changelly is one of their exchange partners.

And looking at how they distribute their app, they could also configure Google Play or App Store to prevent people from certain country from download their wallet software.

[Pmalek]

Since their current wallet aim for simplicity, i wonder how will they handle backup and restore which isn't trivial when opened LN channel is involved.

What do you mean? How do other Lightning wallets handle backups? Phoenix Wallet (since it was already mentioned here) is non-custodial but in the background it's them and their partner ACINQ that take care of the node and funding and managing the lightning channel. It's the most user-friendly way to use a non-custodial LN service. I am sure that WOS will keep things simple and not overcomplicate it.

[apogio]

I think that Wallet of Satoshi and Phoenix Wallet are two of the best connected LN wallets on the market right now. But I am saying that without having used either one. If I am paying for coffee or a burger than I don't think it's that important if the wallet is custodial. It would be worrisome if WOS (the custodial LN wallet) doesn't want to route your payments before you do KYC or provide other information about you and your money.

It's not super important, of course. Because we 're talking about pocket money. And yes, if WoS did that, it would be very bad. Nevertheless, Phoenix offers a great solution in my opinion. It allows you to "not give a f...", use LN and still have full control over your money. This is the reason why I chose to move from WoS to Phoenix. Plus, Phoenix wallet is more technical which I like. It has multiple options and configurations that you can apply.

As far a the connectivity is concerned, like you said, we 're talking about the two biggest and most connected nodes.

Even though for Wallet of Satoshi you may think that it's normal, I believe that Phoenix's is even more normal because Phoenix is implemented by ACINQ which is the company that has developed Eclair, which is one of the major  three lightning implementations (LND, CLN, ECLAIR).

Wallet of Satoshi^[1] node has a capacity of 179.89729623 BTC, whereas ACINQ node^[2] has 547.87798679 BTC. Wallet of Satoshi's node has 1378 active channels, whereas ACINQ has 1882.

The numbers are huge!

[1] https://1ml.com/node/035e4ff418fc8b5554c5d9eea66396c227bd429a3251c8cbc711002ba215bfc226
[2] https://1ml.com/node/03864ef025fde8fb587d989186ce6a4a186895ee44a926bfc370e2c366597a3f8f

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

Interesting statistics. Thanks for that. From your post it looks like you have used both wallets. Was Wallet of Satoshi's custodial nature one of the bigger reasons you switched to Phoenix or did you experience issues with WOS not being able to route your payments due to no connection to the final destination node? They seem both well connected, but Phoenix has a big advantage in total liquidity.

[ABCbits]

Since their current wallet aim for simplicity, i wonder how will they handle backup and restore which isn't trivial when opened LN channel is involved.

What do you mean? How do other Lightning wallets handle backups? Phoenix Wallet (since it was already mentioned here) is non-custodial but in the background it's them and their partner ACINQ that take care of the node and funding and managing the lightning channel. It's the most user-friendly way to use a non-custodial LN service. I am sure that WOS will keep things simple and not overcomplicate it.

Thanks for the reminder, i forget approach by Phoenix wallet exist. I was thinking about old/static backup approach where you need to backup file that contain LN channel state.

[apogio]

Interesting statistics. Thanks for that. From your post it looks like you have used both wallets. Was Wallet of Satoshi's custodial nature one of the bigger reasons you switched to Phoenix or did you experience issues with WOS not being able to route your payments due to no connection to the final destination node? They seem both well connected, but Phoenix has a big advantage in total liquidity.

I have used both, yes. For quite a long time.

I never had a single occasion when a payment couldn't be routed with WoS, nor with Phoenix. Everything works perfectly.

The only times when I had payment failures were when I used my own LN node. I suffered a lot with it, both with LND and CLN implementations. I was using Zeus wallet to connect to my node, but the channel management I had to do, even though it seemed good, it was painful in the end.

Then, I started using WoS because I needed to make payments and couldn't keep getting failures all the time. It was a great experience.

Then, I moved to phoenix, because, as you said, the custodial nature of WoS was always something that bothered me, but I could live with it because of the fact that the amount I was trusting with them was very low.
Phoenix was like adding self-custody to WoS essentially. And I am using it for more than a year, at minimum twice per week. No problem ever.

[suzanne5223]

Yes, the wallet will be available to everyone with the inclusion of the USA users, but they will need to go through KYC.

Keep reading the discussion in that tweet. They explain that the wallet will not require KYC. It wouldn't even make sense because if you have full custody and the keys to your coins then you don't have to listen to people who are asking you to verify your identity.

How do you know it will be available to anyone? They haven't spoken about that I think. The announcement also has a map of the US in the background.

I noticed that and it's was also pointed out by _act_.
When I saw the Tweet last week I was sceptical about the concept of the KYC to add to a non custodial wallet cause it's seems odd but I was like this is the team in charge of the new WOS wallet creation it is not possible to know the wallet more than them.
It is good they later clarify the misconceptions because the tweet have mislead alot of people.

About the wallet availability to everyone. According to UN there are 195 countries in the world, if WOS is android availability to 176 countries and iOS availability to 173 countries excluding the US and planning to add the US now. It is technically available to everyone. Besides, the wallet is good for old age people.

wallet is also suitable for grandmas

[Pmalek]

About the wallet availability to everyone. According to UN there are 195 countries in the world, if WOS is android availability to 176 countries and iOS availability to 173 countries excluding the US and planning to add the US now. It is technically available to everyone.

Wallet of Satoshi stopped serving US customers a few years ago, similarly to how Phoenix Wallet became unavailable to them. In the meantime, residents from the US can use Phoenix Wallet again but I haven't heard that the classic WOS has re-entered the US market. The new and non-custodial wallet will be available to them.

Besides, the wallet is good for old age people.

That's a way of saying that the wallet is so easy to use that even your grandma could do it. Considering that WOS only has "send" and "receive" buttons and requires very little tweaks, it's not too far from the truth.

[apogio]

That's a way of saying that the wallet is so easy to use that even your grandma could do it. Considering that WOS only has "send" and "receive" buttons and requires very little tweaks, it's not too far from the truth.

Exactly! It's a wallet that focuses on simplicity, which (like always) doesn't get combined with self-custody and classic bitcoiners' mentality. This doesn't mean it's bad per se. If it can be used to help people who don't understand bitcoin, to actually use it, it's a "yes" from me.

Originally, Bitcoin was used by computer scientists, cryptographers and, in general, people who had the ability (and the time) to think out of the box. But it's obvious, that if we want to reach higher adoption, we need trusted services. We need more solutions.

And, of course, I / you / all the users here in the forum, will keep using bitcoin as it's intended, following the best practices. We mustn't sacrifice that! We mustn't sacrifice self-custody, nor privacy, but it's good to have more options for people who aren't like us and options that aren't created and controlled by the governments.

[arabspaceship123]

We don't have choices if we're interested in LN payments. Custodial wallet's aren't recommended ppl shouldn't use them because they aren't secure. Are ppl going to use wallet of satoshi if it isn't open source ?

[Pmalek]

We don't have choices if we're interested in LN payments. Custodial wallet's aren't recommended ppl shouldn't use them because they aren't secure. Are ppl going to use wallet of satoshi if it isn't open source ?

What do you mean with we don't have a choice? You have a choice to use a custodial or non-custodial wallet for lightning payments. WOS is a custodial one for example. Phoenix is non-custodial. Aqua Wallet is non-custodial as well and makes it possible to use both Lightning and Liquid assets. There is other software that you can also try. Wallet of Satoshi will soon have both custodial and non-custodial options. So, the choice is yours.

[Ambatman]

We don't have choices if we're interested in LN payments. Custodial wallet's aren't recommended ppl shouldn't use them because they aren't secure. Are ppl going to use wallet of satoshi if it isn't open source ?

What's the essence of it being Non custodial if it's not going to be open sourced.
But as can be seen with Trustwallet, people still use it despite it being changed to a closed sourced wallet
And unfortunately they claim otherwise.

What do you mean with we don't have a choice?

I think he meant custodial wallets shouldn't be taken as an option.