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Chivo wallet, the official standard and the new national wallet of El Salvador, evidently has an interface with Lightning and the Bitcoin network, and it is an

by yebyen 5y ago

Chivo wallet, the official standard and the new national wallet of El Salvador, evidently has an interface with Lightning and the Bitcoin network, and it is an optional way for merchants and consumers in El Salvador to begin accepting payments denominated in Bitcoin or USD. Nobody is required to use Chivo, but people are required to accept legal tender. There's no reason to expect that Chivo-Chivo transfers will go to the trouble of opening individual lightning channels for each user, which costs non trivial amounts of money for each opened and closed channel. It would make sense that users of the app can settle with each other and it doesn't so much as escape the four walls of a database at Chivo-HQ. But McDonalds is a multi-national enterprise and won't be trusting Chivo (or any El-Salvador official banking infra, I'd assume) to manage their wallets. It is really cool to see a (hopefully) successful application of Lightning on Bitcoin in the wild, from a person who has been nay-saying about Lightning. I will be really glad to see it succeed. But I'm dubious about the success of this app. One should hope the two successes are not tied to each other – it's encouraging that there are other companies. I have no way to judge Chivo and I've never used their software, but I have little trust of governments to implement complex systems well, and if there ever was a case study of a burgeoningly complex system, I think Lightning and Bitcoin is the big one.

el-salvador 5y ago
From a screenshot I earlier today, McD El Salvador is using Opennode.com for Bitcoin payments.
- yebyen 5y ago
  I'm hearing reports (unsubstantiated, but reports) that Chivo is built on "a partition" of lightning and that it will be difficult for people who want to get their money out. I don't know enough about lightning to dispute it, but it would seem these reports about Opennode and McDonalds are in conflict with those reports. Do you have any local color or stories to add? I'm interested in what they actually are technically doing, I didn't know that Lightning could be "partitioned" but my Technical Spanish is rusty. Are there any controls that would prevent folks from using Chivo to spend their $30 literally anywhere they wanted, in as much as there is a Bitcoin receiving address for them? (If I opened it up to "all lightning-capable nodes" would that change the story? I understand little in spite of knowing lots about Bitcoin and friends, something something, needs to be a route/path from one node to another?)
  - bubersson 5y ago
    Chivo is a "custodial" wallet, so Chivo is in charge of the funds and can block sending those anywhere if they want. From the current reports the $30 needs to be send to another Chivo to be able to spend it on whatever. After this initial back and forth, it's spendable anywhere. Chivo has just usual Lightning node as any other, you can follow it publicly here: https://amboss.space/node/02f72978d40efeffca537139ad6ac9f09970c000a2dbc0d7aa55a71327c4577a80 https://amboss.space/node/02f72978d40efeffca537139ad6ac9f099... and you can see that they have direct channels with IBEX and others, so payment to many businesses from Chivo can literally be done with 0 sats fee. IBEX then has channel with OpenNode, so when paying to McDonalds there's a chance that IBEX will take some fee.

by yebyen 5y ago

el-salvador 5y ago

From a screenshot I earlier today, McD El Salvador is using Opennode.com for Bitcoin payments.

yebyen 5y ago
I'm hearing reports (unsubstantiated, but reports) that Chivo is built on "a partition" of lightning and that it will be difficult for people who want to get their money out. I don't know enough about lightning to dispute it, but it would seem these reports about Opennode and McDonalds are in conflict with those reports. Do you have any local color or stories to add? I'm interested in what they actually are technically doing, I didn't know that Lightning could be "partitioned" but my Technical Spanish is rusty. Are there any controls that would prevent folks from using Chivo to spend their $30 literally anywhere they wanted, in as much as there is a Bitcoin receiving address for them? (If I opened it up to "all lightning-capable nodes" would that change the story? I understand little in spite of knowing lots about Bitcoin and friends, something something, needs to be a route/path from one node to another?)
- bubersson 5y ago
  Chivo is a "custodial" wallet, so Chivo is in charge of the funds and can block sending those anywhere if they want. From the current reports the $30 needs to be send to another Chivo to be able to spend it on whatever. After this initial back and forth, it's spendable anywhere. Chivo has just usual Lightning node as any other, you can follow it publicly here: https://amboss.space/node/02f72978d40efeffca537139ad6ac9f09970c000a2dbc0d7aa55a71327c4577a80 https://amboss.space/node/02f72978d40efeffca537139ad6ac9f099... and you can see that they have direct channels with IBEX and others, so payment to many businesses from Chivo can literally be done with 0 sats fee. IBEX then has channel with OpenNode, so when paying to McDonalds there's a chance that IBEX will take some fee.