Hey Kids!
Putting the final touches on a new version of Podfriend for web and desktop!

But all my boost functionality in the earlier version stopped working and I have no idea what kind of features have been implemented in the spec over the last year What's cool these days and how do I get boosts working again?!

@martin

> I have no idea what kind of features have been implemented in the spec over the last year

I was posting the same thing a couple weeks ago

In short, for BTC, lnaddress and keysend. Each has trade-offs.

lnaddress is nice bc it lets people specify a human readable, username/domain "email style" reference, that can be looked up to get the wallet address. this lets people provide their lnaddress, and potentially change the wallet address it directs to later.

@martin keysend still works as it did back in the beginning, I believe.

A key difference between keysend and lnaddress, is that keysend lets you send metadata with the payment, but lnaddress does not.

lnaddress does however, allow you send a memo, and so some apps are now hosting their own "boost metadata" endpoints, and including a link to boost metadata in the memo of the payments.

Add rss::payment Metadata by MerryOscar · Pull Request #734 · Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace

A wholistic rss namespace for podcasting. Contribute to Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

So keysend adoption appears to be fading, while lnaddress adoption is rising.

@martin as for Podverse, we've been talking it over, and we don't really want ownership responsibility of payment metadata, so we're looking into if there's a way to bridge these worlds. Continue using the lnaddress metadata format other apps are using, but look for an opt-in declaration by the podcasters for where they want their metadata sent.

@martin as for Podverse, we've been talking it over, and we don't really want ownership responsibility of payment metadata, so we're looking into if there's a way to bridge these worlds. Continue using the lnaddress metadata format other apps are using, but look for an opt-in declaration by the podcasters for where they want their metadata sent.

@mitch @martin

I've been thinking about this and I know even know what to tell you guys tbh. TLDR Alby isn't "free" anymore and we need an alternative and it's not going well. We've been looking for an alternative for years and well doesn't look like one really exist.

Good news is that Alby still does it all and more but requires resources from the users.

Since you guys are talking web I think just using the Alby extension is still the way to go.

@mitch @martin

I've been building stuff over the past few months and started with Bitcoin Wallet Connect and add stuff to it. It supports Alby and other wallets but they don't really work for what we're doing yet.

I had Claude do a summary of what I used when build stablekraft.app that's been my catch all for this stuff over the last few months so I hope it helps.

stablekraft-app/docs/alby-payment-references.md at main · ChadFarrow/stablekraft-app

Contribute to ChadFarrow/stablekraft-app development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

@ChadF @martin thanks! This summary is helpful. It looks similar to I'm working on locally at the moment.

I'm not using those libraries (trying to avoid libraries in nextgen, when feasible) but besides that, looks about the same.

@mitch @martin

I'm vibecoding so I just drop in GitHub repos and hope for the best but the Bitcoin Connect stuff is what really got the ball rolling for me but you already have the Alby stuff working in Podverse web.

This also does NWC that Oscar and Franco have been working on but that's still very early and has a lot of issues still.

@ChadF @martin wow, that's a lot of apps in Bitcoin Connect. I guess they don't all use WebLN, and therefore have different steps for connecting your wallet to the page?

I have not gone through the NWC payment flow yet, so I don't have good mental model of that works.

Also, the UX of stablekraft.app is cool. Has a nice music library feel to it.

If you ever have coding questions I may be able to help with, feel free to reach out. I'm on Discord and Matrix in addition to here.

@mitch @martin It seems a waste of time to be working on this right now. Nobody seems to have any clue about what to do, as evidenced by this short discussion.

What a great shame.

@mitch @martin It seems a waste of time to be working on this right now. Nobody seems to have any clue about what to do, as evidenced by this short discussion.

What a great shame.

@mitch @martin

I've been thinking about this and I know even know what to tell you guys tbh. TLDR Alby isn't "free" anymore and we need an alternative and it's not going well. We've been looking for an alternative for years and well doesn't look like one really exist.

Good news is that Alby still does it all and more but requires resources from the users.

Since you guys are talking web I think just using the Alby extension is still the way to go.

@mitch @martin

Most apps listed in Bitcoin Connect are just NWC connections and when you click on them it gives you detailed instructions on how to connect them which is nice but kind of misleading.

Those wallets also don't support keysend and most feeds have keysend addresses still so it's a nonstarter anyways but I'm just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

Thanks man.

@ChadF @mitch @martin that's the reason many consider keysend “deprecated”. It still works great, but the vast majority of wallets don't support it. So we have two paths at this time: stay in an Alby-only world (I love them, but most users won't install AlbyHub to use a podcast app), or embrace LNAddress and extend it so it brings metadata. I'm chosing the second, and added NWC + Boostbox API to Castamatic.

@martin @ChadF @mitch BoostBox API is a way to comunicate and store the old metadata payload we used to include in keysend, but on a separate server. It's quite simple, you POST the json metadata to a server, and get back a url to include in the LnAddress/LNURLp payment comments. The recipient of the payment uses that url to GET the same json metadata.

BoostBox

(boostbox.cloud)

@martin keysend still works as it did back in the beginning, I believe.

A key difference between keysend and lnaddress, is that keysend lets you send metadata with the payment, but lnaddress does not.

lnaddress does however, allow you send a memo, and so some apps are now hosting their own "boost metadata" endpoints, and including a link to boost metadata in the memo of the payments.

Add rss::payment Metadata by MerryOscar · Pull Request #734 · Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace

A wholistic rss namespace for podcasting. Contribute to Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

So keysend adoption appears to be fading, while lnaddress adoption is rising.

@martin @ChadF @mitch For the user it's quite simple. Get any wallet you like (eg. Primal app gives you a NWC wallet for free if I remember correctly). Scan a QR code to connect app<->wallet. Then send boosts and stream sats as before.

AlbyHub can still be used via NWC.

Most difficult part for newbies IMHO is buying sats with USD, but that’s the same as before.