As part of my working on the @v4vapp Hive Lightning Bridge, the lnd.v4v.app service for swapping small amounts of Hive or HBD for Lightning in various wallets easily and quickly, I've come to appreciate the nuances of the differences between various Lightning Wallet apps.
I'm talking especially about Wallet Apps on phones. The Gold Standard (Bitcoin Standard I should say) for Lightning is to run your own node. That involves having a computer (almost of any sort) with at least 1TB of SSD connected to the Internet all the time. Running a node like this is a reasonable amount of technical work.
If you can't or don't want to do that, you can use any of the following Wallet apps and if I've missed some, tell me and I'll try them and report. I'm presenting a list based on my personal tests (I have an iPhone) and how they work with my @v4vapp lnd.v4v.app service. This is a useful wider reference.
Hive is Non-Custodial - your keys, your crypto
Let's just get one thing straight for Hive: we're almost always talking about non-custodial storage. You control your keys, you might use Hive Keychain or HiveSigner or HAS to help you manage your keys, but they're yours and most Hive Dapps don't have and don't ask for direct access to your keys.
I'll also add that I have not being making full, on chain Bitcoin transactions with any of these wallets. I'm talking only about Lightning here.
Wallets I Can't Try but want to: Strike and Cash App
In the US you have access to two wallets I would love to try but can't. Strike and Cash app. Both of these claim to allow you to buy and then send Lightning direct from a fiat money account. I would be very interested to work with someone who can test this with my service.
Custodial - not your keys, not your crypto
However.... when we're talking about a few 100,000 Sats in the $40 to $200 range, I don't think most of us really care too much about the distinction.
Wallet of Satoshi
Wallet of Satoshi doesn't try to be a full lightning node and it just works. All the "wallets" are connected directly to a public Node which I have got a dedicated channel with. That means when the Hive Lightning Bridge sends sats, there are exactly 0 fees (as long as I manage liquidity properly.
Wallet of Satoshi has been around a long time and I find it is very well connected so able to pay to other services and wallets with high reliability and low fees.
But it is Custodial, always be aware of that. It does offer a log in via an email loop and way to recover your wallet on another device as long as you have access to the email you set up.
Blue Wallet
Blue Wallet is capable of being a fully non-custodial wallet when paired with your own Lightning node. But if you install and use it with the defaults it will run as a custodial Lightning wallet. Running this way I find it to be reliable and low fee when used with my gateway.
Chivo (El Salvador only)
I haven't been able to try this out but I do know that I have successfully sent sats to it. It appears to be a regular pooled wallet solution and in my limited experience I can send funds to it.
Non-Custodial - your keys, your crypto
The next two wallets I've tested with quite a bit. Both present different challenges because they both run some form of real Lightning node and because of this there are some challenges in actual use.
Breez
Breez is not just a Lightning Wallet, it's also got a podcast playing app in it. That's a big deal. If you put some sats in Breez you can then send boostograms and streaming sats to any value enabled podcast which includes all @threespeak channels and videos! Breez is the ONLY full Lightning wallet app that can play value enabled podcasts. There are other Value enabled podcast apps that can handle Lighting but they're not full wallets.
From the Lightning side Breez creates a full node on your phone which is a complex piece of tech. However this node hibernates when the phone isn't in the foreground so strange things occur with channels and being able to receive payments if you close your phone.
I've found that payments to and from Breez can randomly fail, then succeed when tried immediately after a failure.
Within the Breeze app there is also access to a number of other services. I like what Breez is trying to do, but I feel there needs to be a significant technology iteration before it is ready for wider use.
Muun
Muun has taught me a whole lot about the inner workings of Lightning! After a lot of work I believe I can reliably send Lightning to and receive from Muun but it took some work. Muun has some sophisticated channel management but does charge fees of around 0.25% in and out of the wallet. There is also a state which can happen if you try to deposit funds into a Muun wallet but you close the app on the phone. My Lightning system will spend up to 24 hours trying to make the payment! If the app on the phone is opened in that time the payment will happen and my system will complete.
Bitcoin
Muun and Breez both deal with full Bitcoin transactions in interesting ways but I haven't explored this functionality. I'm not really comfortable with storing a whole lot of Bitcoin in wallet apps on my phone.
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