Thread

Lightning is pretty private if used correctly. The argument, for me at least, is that because of how hard it is to use that way the vast majority are using custodial wallets like Wallet of Satoshi that can see everything they do (and any rogue employees, hackers, and governments that get acces to that centralized database). Similar privacy to a bank. Even non-custodial LSP wallets like Phoenix don't offer any better privacy (they admit this on their own website) In comparison, for the average user (by definition most users), Moneros privacy is much easier to attain. Privacy from both counterparty and third parties. Not just one. https://zapalytics.com/ https://gist.github.com/supertestnet/5bceb60d9c691da744a55dad3f60e65e#file-wallets-txt-L12

Custodial is non-private, so most Lightning transactions are not private by default, even if it is challenging tracing them.

Exactly. It's tentatively private from the general public, but not the custodians or anyone else that gets access to that centralized database. And if there is a data breach, which is very common, it won't be private from the general public anymore either. https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://leak-lookup.com/

> the vast majority are using custodial wallets like Wallet of Satoshi that can see everything they do This is a terrible argument. You go on all the time about how monero has better privacy than bitcoin. Imagine my reply was "yeah but most people use bitcoin." What would that prove as a reply? Nothing, except that most people don't care about monero's privacy advantages. So when I argue "lightning has better privacy than monero" and you reply with "yeah but most people use custodians" it proves nothing, except that most people don't care about self-custodial lightning's privacy advantages.

Many Monero users use light clients that leak sensitive information to the wallet operator server.

damn bro all that work for 21k sats, good job no one can find the sender's node of this zap, meanwhile he's receiving it on coinos (custodial) so you guys basically re-invented PayPal, visa, mc, alipay, etc Just sent a Stripe payment to an online ecommerce, will send 100x to whoever finds my origin bank!

No Monero users use light clients because they aren't even live in any app. Monero users connect to remote nodes or their own self hosted nodes and do all syncing and tx processing on their devices and the remote node never learns sensitive information

So how does the remote node know which transactions to send to the user?

The node sends blocks and the wallet finds out the transactions by scanning, using the keys on the device. Every wallet gets the same info and the wallet never tells the node about the txs it finds

So a wallet downloads all blocks of the entire history?

Why is it a terrible argument? People are more likely to use the easier tool. If it's too hard they wont do it. The facts are there on your own github. If you further separated non-custodial LSPs like Phoenix that can see your transactions as well it would be even more obvious. So are you saying if Lightning wasn't easier to use privately more users wouldn't use it that way? Of course they would! Do you expect the average user to use PGP to find someones public keys and manually encrypt every time they want to send someone a message? What if I showed them something like Signal and said everything was done for them by default? How popular do you expect each one would be? The answer is glaringly obvious if you're honest. If Monero was just as hard to use privately as Lightning I would expect the same consequence.

Yes. They have to catch up from the last block that was synced. That's one of the major complaints about Monero is the sync times. If you use the same keys on a new wallet you have to sync all the way back from wallet creation date. Last block synced is one of the few pieces of data that nodes can see.

None of the major wallets use light clients (Cake, Monerujo, Feather, GUI/CLI) You have to sync everything. I think I only know of one light client that exists and its a multi-coin wallet.

which isn't what he said at all. defaults matter. UX matters. monero provides good privacy by default with a good UX. LN doesnt.

which one is that? I've never seen a light client in the wild.

It's either Edge or Exodus. I can't remember which one at the moment.

Thought it was easy. But I can make it 1000x you prefer. You didn't sent cash doing so though, I did. As you obviously knows it's not the same at all. I sent cash, doesn't matter how recipient handled it. As of today it's trivial to get your own self custodial LN node to receive, it's just for the async payment part that it is still tricky but even here, if I can receive in a asynchronous way as a non tech guy, everyone can actually do it.

You are right but the point is that Monero bros seem to refute the fact that it can't scale either on-chain, and it will have to adopt L2s too with the same problems encountered on Bitcoin. So eventually it's a battle of L2s with maybe here again an advantage for Monero in term of privacy but much smaller, and when come potential L3s it will be the same. The inevitable scaling in layer for blockchain based currency make the advantage of on-chain privacy smaller and smaller as you go up the layers. So in that context I can't see how Monero could be more than a Bitcoin side chain for spending.

Just did my first blinded path payment yesterday through nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7ct5d3shxtnwdaehgu3wd3skueqpzemhxue69uhky6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skcqpqxnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2s7szjpe . Pretty soon IMO even ACINQ won't be able to see the recipient. You just refuse to let enough time to LN, while also ignoring that you'll need to scale with L2's also on Monero if people start using it one day in the future, and will face the same challenges.

I think it's also what it takes for Silent Payment, your wallet need to scan all the blocks since last sync to recover its balance. Kind of a pain in the ass in term of UX no ? Never used a monero wallet so can't relate if it's a real problem or not in term of UX. I mean in that sense, it's a bit like a self custodfial LN wallet having to sync the graph before paying, and I can relate that it can be painful if you need to pay right away the merchant.

Sure, but that is a different discussion from the original topic of privacy Yes. Monero will actually enable L2s with the FCMP upgrade coming out later this year. I'm sure there will be a Lightning-like L2 on Monero at some point, but unlike Bitcoin it isn't necessary to use for privacy. Monero also does away with the privacy issues of going back on/off chain. Also, L2s don't necessarily mean Lightning either. Could potentially go down a different path and do some kind of ZK-rollup, CSV, etc. https://github.com/monero-project/research-lab/issues/116

I don't know why the reason is, but Monero scanning is very very fast in comparison. So far, any Silent Payment integration I've tried is impractically and painfully slow. I've given up using it for now. Maybe it will improve down the road? Yea, its a UX trade-off for sure, especially vs other cryptocurrency, but a relatively simple one because all you have to do is open your wallet and wait. Nothing else. And if you use it somewhat regularly it's pretty damn quick to catch up. I think Cake Wallet is going to release periodic background syncing soon which should improve it UX once more wallets adopt this.

Zeus is my favorite LN wallet and I think blinded paths are dope. Too bad they aren't default or popular yet. I think Monero is going to go down a different path for L2s. Probably some kind of ZK-rollup from what I read. And if it does implement a Lightning-like network it will be built on an encrypted blockchain + you guys have already done all the hard work for us 😉

Show us the data. I never encountered anyone in real life and the Monero community is actively discouraging the use of a lite wallet if LWS is not hosted by themselves.