Super Testnet on Nostr: > it is a one-time stealth address it is useless for tracing or tracking anything ...
> it is a one-time stealth address it is useless for tracing or tracking anything beyond that
If that was true, it would still only be *almost* as good as lightning, because (1) that's also true of lightning invoices (they are useless for tracking down *other* payments to the recipient) and (2) unlike monero public addresses, the sender *can't* (usually) map it to the "real" destination
But it's not true that stealth addresses are useless for tracking. You can watch a stealth address to see when it shows up as a possible spender in a future transaction, and then use heuristics to probablistically identify whether or not it's the "real" spender. You cannot do that with a lightning invoice because it *actually* never appears again (and never shows up on the blockchain at all).
> The problem with Lightning is the complexity involved in using it in a sovereign manner. It's not as "plug-and-play" as Monero.
Using monero in a "plug and play" manner gets people arrested. For example, Chainalysis was able to successfully trace a monero payment to the right user in part because they had access to so many user IP addresses, given to them for free (along with user transaction data) by Cake Wallet and Monerujo: https://www.digilol.net/blog/chainanalysis-malicious-xmr.html Even the monero website warns against using monero without taking extra precautions to guard your personal info: https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/faq/#anchor-magic
To use monero properly, you have to run a tor service and your own monero node. It's not a "plug and play" privacy solution, there is no "plug and play" privacy solution. So if you're going to do privacy properly, run a lightning node, not a monero node. Neither one is plug and play, and both require some setup, but lightning offers better privacy once you do the setup.
> Vast majority of users are using custodians and a small portion use LSPs - both introduce third-parties back into the equation along with privacy implications...
There are no good statistics on whether the majority of LN users use a custodian or not. The best I've seen is nostr statistics, where most people self-report using a custodian. But using a custodian for nostr zaps does not imply that you use a custodian for your daily spending money. And besides that, some custodians (like ecash mints) offer better privacy than monero, and some LSPs (like Acinq and Zeus) also offer better privacy for their users by supporting blinded paths, and often defaulting to them. Moreover, what are the stats on custodians in monero? I suspect it is rather large. The XMR blockchain indicates that a lot of the payments in monero are batch (multi-output) payments, which are usually done by exchanges and probably DNMs. Maybe I'll make a stats page tracking probable-custodian usage in monero and see how it compares with nostr.
If that was true, it would still only be *almost* as good as lightning, because (1) that's also true of lightning invoices (they are useless for tracking down *other* payments to the recipient) and (2) unlike monero public addresses, the sender *can't* (usually) map it to the "real" destination
But it's not true that stealth addresses are useless for tracking. You can watch a stealth address to see when it shows up as a possible spender in a future transaction, and then use heuristics to probablistically identify whether or not it's the "real" spender. You cannot do that with a lightning invoice because it *actually* never appears again (and never shows up on the blockchain at all).
> The problem with Lightning is the complexity involved in using it in a sovereign manner. It's not as "plug-and-play" as Monero.
Using monero in a "plug and play" manner gets people arrested. For example, Chainalysis was able to successfully trace a monero payment to the right user in part because they had access to so many user IP addresses, given to them for free (along with user transaction data) by Cake Wallet and Monerujo: https://www.digilol.net/blog/chainanalysis-malicious-xmr.html Even the monero website warns against using monero without taking extra precautions to guard your personal info: https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/faq/#anchor-magic
To use monero properly, you have to run a tor service and your own monero node. It's not a "plug and play" privacy solution, there is no "plug and play" privacy solution. So if you're going to do privacy properly, run a lightning node, not a monero node. Neither one is plug and play, and both require some setup, but lightning offers better privacy once you do the setup.
> Vast majority of users are using custodians and a small portion use LSPs - both introduce third-parties back into the equation along with privacy implications...
There are no good statistics on whether the majority of LN users use a custodian or not. The best I've seen is nostr statistics, where most people self-report using a custodian. But using a custodian for nostr zaps does not imply that you use a custodian for your daily spending money. And besides that, some custodians (like ecash mints) offer better privacy than monero, and some LSPs (like Acinq and Zeus) also offer better privacy for their users by supporting blinded paths, and often defaulting to them. Moreover, what are the stats on custodians in monero? I suspect it is rather large. The XMR blockchain indicates that a lot of the payments in monero are batch (multi-output) payments, which are usually done by exchanges and probably DNMs. Maybe I'll make a stats page tracking probable-custodian usage in monero and see how it compares with nostr.