I had a long drive today and my mind was wondering after listening to a podcast about government overreach
As we know Bitcoin was built around self custody, even if Hal did mention in 2010 the need for Bitcoin banks
Over time, however, much of the ux around Bitcoin payments has become dependent on web build out, receiving sats requires websites, domains and centralized services to 'coordinate' lol payment information, more like track every move
CLINK, developed by Justin, plants a seed in my mind, although it is currently focused on Ln, its under the hood makes me think...
Could CLINK turn itself into a protocol for coordinating onchain Bitcoin payments?
As we know the N in CLINK separates identity from payment settlement, rather than identifying a stacker through a website or domain name, CLINK uses a Nostr keypair, could a wallet communicate with another wallet over Nostr to obtain payment instructions?
As I was driving along, I was thinking if there is any potentiality for this
Imagine Jack wants to send Jill some bitcoin, instead of visiting a website or an LNURL, Jill's wallet uses a Nostr keypair via CLINK the other wallet responds with onchain payment information, new address or whatever and the tx is broadcast, how the broadcast and CLINK interact I don't know, this is more vibe thinking
No website involved, no domain registration or centralized sparkisms
Could CLINK make p2p a thing?
If domains, hosting providers or payment processors feel the heat of regulatory pressure, plebs would not lose the ability to receive payments because a website went down, their id would exist independently on Nostr, while payments would happen over relays
Remembering, CLINK obviously doesn't replace Bitcoin's settlement layer, the timechain remains the source of truth, CLINK provides the communication layer that allows two wallets to discover each other and negotiate how payment will take place
Could Bitcoin benefit from separating id from final settlement, Nostr provides the keypair and messaging, CLINK provides payment, somehow, remember this is a piece of creative writing, i don't know if any of this is possible but i like to write out ideas when they come to me
Maybe a CLINK request could advertise multiple payment methods depending on what both wallets support...
- Lightning for small tx's
- Onchain for larger
- Maybe Silent Payments
Obviously the feds can just shut down the net, relays, devs and go after noderunners if they really want to go to town
What it can do is remove one significant dependency, the need to rely on web infrastructure to receive payment
I mean, this might be totally impossible but it's been fun thinking about it 🤷
And if this is already a thing - I'll get my coat 🤦♂️
I'm leaning toward supporting CLINK, though I'm not sure how feasible all of this is technically. CLINK is a powerful idea because it builds on Nostr, a resilient and decentralized protocol. Separating identity from payment coordination feels like a promising direction for making Bitcoin more censorship-resistant and peer-to-peer.
Perhaps @justin_shocknet can give us some light on this.
It's feasible, it's just that the chain is actually more difficult for payments when you need to track context
#1526180
Ultimately nostr is great for communicating any pointer ping pong for any other protocol, eventually this will compound as even more protocols bootstrap off the same substrate
Considered having chain addresses in payload but it complicates client ux/dx a bit, the wallet server too is actually harder than lightning alone because of the need to address track and deal with gap limits in recovery
However, since it's just transport for bolt11, chain addresses can go in the invoices with the
ftag without a spec change which is intended in lightning for chain fallback