Announcing Test releases of ShockWallet and Lightning.Pub

We're pleased to announce public test releases of ShockWallet and Lightning Pub!

As a continuation of the work we started during Legends of Lightning and NostrHack Hackathons, we've resumed work on ShockWallet and Lightning Pub, and we'd like you to test and provide feedback!

As a quick recap, Lightning Pub is a daemon for your Lightning Node, providing a full RPC and account system over nostr.  

Pub's nostr RPC gives your node LNURL and REST like capabilities, but fully end-to-end encrypted and bi-directional interfacing that “just works” in the browser, since nostr relays have solved the networking and SSL problems for you!

Now, with Lightning Pub, you can easily give websites, apps, friends, family, other guests, and wallets, granular access to your node without need for the complicated networking and setup of a traditional webserver.  

As the creators of Lightning.Video, we recently started using Lightning.Pub in production there, but a tool this powerful demanded an everyday wallet that could take advantage of all it has to offer. So, we've rebooted ShockWallet!

This new release features the following enhancements as we push to make ShockWallet the best daily-driver in Lightning:

• UI Polish

• Bootstrap or Self-Custodial Mode

• Node Multi-Sourcing (LNURL and LPUB)

• Pay To LNURL, LPUB, Chain 

• Encrypted File Backup/Restore

• Client-side transaction history

• Customizable Mempool endpoint

• Customizable Fiat estimator 

• PWA and Android Builds 

  • (uses Ionic Framework, any volunteers for iOS build?)

Pub itself is a very lightweight nodejs/qlite package that can attach to your existing Lightning node. 

A fee regime built-in to Pub, combined with these powerful RPC features, will incentivize more Uncle Jim nodes and keep the network decentralized.

Other Rationale:

Slow and clunky mobile nodes that have poor pathfinding performance, don't scale, are too expensive for casual users, and require unsustainable hacks to deal with async payments, have given lightning an unfairly bad reputation. The poor current state of Lightning wallets has pushed most users to custodial solutions like WoS, and benefits banker projects like "federated" ECash payment systems.

We're actually rushing this release by a week or so in light of the WoS take-down.

We believe the future is the Uncle Jim in all of us on-boarding our personal circle, in a decentralized and sustainable way, without compromising on UX.

Some groundwork has also been started on planned features that can leverage this marriage between Lightning and Nostr.

• Nostr native “Offers” / static QR spec

• Automation (Service subscriptions or auto moving sats to non-custodial node)

• Contacts

• Notifications

• “Jimvitations" to self-custodially onboard family

• Admin Dashboard for Lightning.Pub Nodes