Comparing the functionality of iOS lightning wallets
In this article I am going to briefly summarize some of the functionality of the currently available iOS lightning wallets. The wallets tested are:
BlueWallet
Breez
Lightning: Fast Bitcoin Wallet
Muun
Wallet of Satoshi
Zap
Sats app
Bitpie
Nayuta
This list may not include all existing wallets at the time of writing this article. Also some of the wallets in the test are not available in the app store yet and have to be installed via the testflight app.
Non-custodial
Non-custodial wallets allow the user to take full ownership of his/her bitcoins. It means that the keys for accessing the funds in in full control of the user and nobody can take away money from you. When using custodial wallets, on the other hand, the wallet company has the ownership of your keys, which means you have to trust them not to run away with your money.
Listed on App store
Some of the apps in this test are available as functioning beta versions only. They are not available in the App store yet but can be installed from testflight.
Can connect to remote node
Wallets like Zap or Sats app can connect to a remote lightning node and control it from the app. This allows the user to run a full bitcoin node together with a lightning node (e.g. LND) at home and be 100% self-sovereign. Some of these wallets also work without a separate remote node.
LND and Neutrino
Lightning: Fast bitcoin wallet, Breez and Nayuta use an LND lightning node implementation together with a Neutrino wallet which uses the simplified payment verification (SPV) protocol. SPV wallets allow checking the validity of bitcoin transactions without downloading the whole bitcoin blockchain.
Channel is created when installed
Breez wallet automatically opens a channel to the Breez Lightning Network hub so that you can start receiving Lightning payments as soon as the channel confirms. Although the inbound capacity is limited, Breez is the only non-custodial wallet which takes care of inbound lightning capacity right from the start.
Add funds by submarine swap
Breez wallet only contains a lightning balance, so in order to add funds from an on-chain bitcoin address submarine swaps are used. Submarine swaps use a swap provider to link an on-chain transaction with a Lightning channel transaction. Within the wallet the user can send an on-chain transaction to a bitcoin address, wait one confirmation and then receive the funds in the wallet’s lightning balance.
Pay via submarine swap
Muun wallet does the opposite of Breez and only contain an on-chain bitcoin balance. In order to make lightning payments Muun uses submarine swaps. Payment is instant and does not require the user to wait for one confirmation. It comes with a (small) cost though, as there’s a swap fee that has to be paid to the swap provider. In the test I made the fee was 0.0000361 BTC, which was more than the payment itself of 0.000001 BTC.
Can receive on lightning immediately
The three custodial lightning wallets Bluewallet, Wallet of Satoshi and Bitpie do all the lightning magic behind the scenes for the user. A nice advantage of this is that these wallets allow immediately receiving funds on lightning upon installation on the phone. These wallets are therefore good tools for onboarding new users to lightning. More serious users would probably rather go for a non-custodial wallet in order to keep full control of his/her funds.
Only on-chain balance
Muun only contains on-chain Bitcoin and as described above interacts with lightning via submarine swaps. The wallet can only receive funds on-chain and not via lightning.
Only lightning balance
Breez only contains a lightning balance. Funds are added by submarine swaps as described further above.
Synchronizes when starting
Wallets which are operating a lightning node on the phone, such as e.g. Nayuta need to synchronize the blockchain state when starting up the app, because iOS does not allow to do that in the background.
Pay someone nearby
Breez allows connecting to a nearby phone which also has Breez installed to make an easy peer-to-peer payment.
Watchtowers
Nayuta wallet is the only wallet so far which allows the user to specify a watchtower. Watchtowers are third party services that identify and penalize bad actors for cheating users within channels.
Published at Fri, 25 Oct 2019 19:39:26 +0000
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