Spark is basically a CBDC that is connected to Bitcoin - The service provider can see all your transactions - The service provider can steal your money and close your account - Fractional reserves are possible

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.'s avatar
. 6 days ago
Doesn't it also send a kyc packet ahead of the transaction?
.'s avatar
. 6 days ago
I swear I saw an interview with marcus where it explained the permissioned nature whereby a transaction wpuld be rejected before it even sent if the kyc was flagged by the receiver.
It’s trivial for the service provider to deny service. I do not know what mechanisms they have in place for this at present but it is definitely technically possible.
non-custodial basically doesn't exist for dust amount without utxo ownership. i don't see how you'll ever get around that
Yup, great point that is often overlooked. Wouldn’t call this scenario custodial though. Economical unviable onchain. Sorta like walking into Five Guys with only $5.
I don't doubt there is a use case for this trust profile, but why claim that something is non custodial? Unless they're playing with words and they want to state that *self* custodial is different from *non* custodial
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rips 6 days ago
I'll travel with you.
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Dex 6 days ago
seen that take before. ran my own node for a bit and yeah, the control thing matters, but custody tradeoffs are real. what's your actual use case—are you running full lightning or just testing?
What tradeoffs? Either you are using your own node or you are using someone else’s node. It gives you full control and increased privacy. It’s cheap, small, and quiet. I don’t see any reason not to be self-sovereign. You should be running a Bitaxe too.
spark/arkade self-custody is a gray area. if you have money in spark that you want to send or withdraw and the creepy centralized company is not cooperating, you can do a unilateral exit. this is very hard and potentially costs more than your entire balance. none of the consumer friendly spark enabled wallets have it as a built in feature. you must perform an arcane ritual with dev tools, and every single one of your VTXOs needs to be unrolled to L1 using layers of fancy and expensive taproot transactions. you'll hate it and think it's awful. there is an edge case where lightspark can collude with a person who previously sent you money in order to double spend it, by using keys corresponding to an older state of your VTXO that they pinky promised to delete. they have no way of proving that they cannot do this save for "we used an intel TEE" or some silly nonsense like that. these statechain protocols also implement centralized stablecoins. you can even see it in blitz wallet today. while they are floating around in the statechain they are designed to be freezable. maybe these are taproot assets that the L1 can potentially understand, but even if you wanted to try and exit them to L1 nobody uses them on L1 and they will be useless.
this is the only way you can scale lightning to large numbers of people. the only way to "fix" lightning right now is by making it centralized and adding trust assumptions. you can bitch all you want about spark but you should redirect your frustration to the lack of building blocks available on L1. premature ossification will just lead to things like spark. it is time to think about doing better. covenant opcodes are most likely the next building blocks to get added.
Yes. We try to be honest with our users and encourage them to upgrade to self-custody as it becomes economically viable. Try out the experimental version in the app today or see it fleshed out in full in v0.13 next month.
For those addicted to podcasts, here @Seth For Privacy explains things about #spark and their integration into @Cake Wallet [Ungovernable Misfits] Cake Adds Lightning ⚡ | FREEDOM TECH FRIDAY 32 #ungovernableMisfits via #PodcastAddict
"Connected to Bitcoin" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Bitcoin's value proposition is that the service provider *can't* steal your money. If they can, you don't have Bitcoin — you have a claim on Bitcoin. That's a different thing with a different risk profile, and it should be called what it is.
It's a must trust, can't verify situation. You're trusting them to have deleted the setup keys (it's impossible to prove you've deleted something). If they haven't, they can unilaterally withdraw your funds too!
Leia isso: "Spark’s trust model is minimal and transient: 1-of-n operators must act honestly at the moment of transfer, and even if all fail, your pre-signed exit transaction lets you reclaim your Bitcoin on L1 unilaterally. No permission from Spark or anyone else." Fonte:
Vc confia somente no momento da transação, após a transação ocorrer, ninguém pode te roubar. (E mesmo que tentassem, é só com o detentedor anterior, não com todos os que tem saldos na Spark) E vc precisa confiar em somente um da federação ser honesto deletando a chave. E convenhamos, não tem incentivo nenhum para que algum participante da federação não siga a regra, imagina os três? Sobre a Spark ver todas as transações, isso acontece com a Phoenix e não vejo ninguém fazer drama contra a Phoenix.
The "connected to Bitcoin" framing is doing a lot of work here. Custodial Lightning has always had these tradeoffs — they're not new, they're the tradeoffs. The problem is when the branding implies you're in the same security category as self-custody. The test is simple: can you unilaterally exit? If you need permission from a service provider to move your money, you're a customer. Customers have counterparty risk. That's a legitimate product — lots of people make that tradeoff knowingly. It becomes a problem when the framing obscures which product you're actually holding.
The trust model is the tell. "Bitcoin-connected" custody is still custody — your coins move at someone else's discretion, not yours. Mt. Gox didn't fail because it was careless. It failed because the architecture allowed it to. Spark's architecture allows the same things. Self-custody isn't paranoia; it's the only way the system property actually holds.
Afaik you have the unilateral exist way always possible with Spark if they try to KYC shotgun ? If unilateral exist is possible then how is it really different from a LSP disabling your channel if you don't KYC ? Last question, wouldn't blind signatures on top or Ark\Spark be a reasonable trade-off for good UX and almost impossible denial of service attack ?
the slow erosion is already visible. but most people still can't see the writing on the wall. this is all downstream consequence of perverse narratives winning in the bitcoin memetic space for a decade now.
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adenglvs 5 days ago
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adenglvs 5 days ago
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Yes you can unilaterally exit if denial of service is made against you on lightspark’s Spark entity. Further more, theoretically anyone can spin up and be a Spark Entity with their own Spark Operator quorum and specifically orientate themselves as a non-kyc operation. There’s however always the genuine risk of collision leaving you without coin. But that’s much less likely if there are more than 1 Spark Entities plus more than 1 Spark service providers. Currently there is 1 SE lightspark , 2 Spark Operators in that Entity (lighspark and flasnet (apparently related to lightspark) and 1 ssp (lightspark) but breeze is meant to become one I believe. It’s the positioning of lightspark (enterprise interoperability with the banking system with UMA) that some people are having the issue with, not so much the protocol itself (from what I gather) LSP question is valid and I’d like to know more about it from @ZEUS however again I’d imaging it’s more the positioning here, they are going in the other direction, so the likelyhood of KYC denial of service would be dramatically reduce.
Spark server code isn't public. You have to go through their company to become an operator. RE LSP privacy, if you have client-side payment routing (which ZEUS has) you don't know where your customers are making payments to and from. It's night and day.
The privacy side of the issue is valid for sure, but the trust model in terme'of custody is not so bad from what I understand, if there are enough Spark Operator involved at least. Any LSP could also try to cheat as they perfectly know that no is running a watch tower so... The most important issue I see is about privacy indeed, still but I can't unsee Spark as a good thing compared to full custody that many people used through WOS until now. I prefer to see the glass half full. But we can imagine informal Spark entities runned by federations "Liquid like", with blinded signatures on top of spark. That would be cashu on steroids actually. Best case scenario is obviously Ark + CTV + chaumian ecash.
this critique of spark highlights the risks of custodial bitcoin solutions where surveillance and confiscation are just business policy. it matters because understanding the trade-off between convenience and sovereignty prevents users from trading away the properties that make bitcoin valuable in the first place. credit to the voice calling out custodial risk.
EVAN KALOUDIS's avatar EVAN KALOUDIS
Spark is basically a CBDC that is connected to Bitcoin - The service provider can see all your transactions - The service provider can steal your money and close your account - Fractional reserves are possible
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Largely, but not entirely. Ark service providers have full visibility into all transactions within its Ark instance. They will always be able to refuse you service, but you can unilaterally exit if they do. The big self-custody issue is that without covenants, providers can collude with the previous VTXO owner to rug you. tl;dr signigicant improvements over Ark, but still fraught, especially without covenants
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Dex 2 days ago
so the exit ramp is what actually saves you there— but covenants feel like table stakes at this point. you actively building with either of these, or more watching how it plays out?
Yes, that's true, but realistically what percentage of payments will be in-round? I think 95%+ will be out of round due to the prevalence of Lightning and lack of interoperability between Ark providers.
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Analogue Dog 2 days ago
I guess it depends. Ark is probably. more appropriate for near-real-time finality, and likely very well suited to trade between members of a community. Lighting will always prevail for real time, coffee-bar type transactions. Perhaps secure enclaves (see: #Lexe wallet) could be used to reduce Ark liquidy requirements; vtxo refresh could then be delegated.
allen's avatar
allen yesterday
but a16z invested so I’m confused
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panacea yesterday
we cant 'print' gold, how did fiat come about?
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errant yesterday
@ZEUS is king. I am too stupid to use it though. Too complex.