This is an interesting privacy guide for bitcoiners. I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but I like their emphasis on coin control and silent payments and lightning.
It is written by someone in the whirlpool/ashuigaru side of the coinjoin world, so it doesn't mention Wasabi or JoinMarket (sigh), but it does have a lot of discussion of how to handle UTXOs post mix (something I have always felt a little nervous about).
There is also an interesting section about trying to measure the privacy of your wallet.
Both Wasabi and Joinmarket are mentioned in detail in pages adjacent to Whirlpool in the CoinJoin section i'm not sure why you think they are not there?
Shoot, you are right! I was looking at it on my phone and didn't see them. Thanks for pointing it out.
https://bitcoinprivacy.wiki/techniques/coinjoin/wasabi/
https://bitcoinprivacy.wiki/techniques/coinjoin/joinmarket/
Thank you, I have politely requested Darth to open an issue or PR with what he would like to see included in the lightning section (since he positions himself as an expert).
I appreciate you for checking out the site, I encourage anyone to open an issue or PR if they want something included or improved etc.
I believe that this is the most comprehensive site on bitcoin privacy out there. There is no bias or whatever Darth is suggesting.
Note: This is not a "guide" it is more a explanation of the theory behind various aspects of bitcoin privacy.
There are guides referenced/linked, for example the silentpayments section has a guide from planB academy linked as the guide for people to look at when they have understood the theory. The stonewall page includes links to guides from BTC Sessions and planB also.
I really appreciated that you put coin control front and center in the privacy section. I thought it was a pretty great website. Will definitely be using it as a reference for people (and for myself!).
Quite outdated and misleading / incomplete wiki about LN
You know better than I do, but I thought the LSP section was okay.
Which of these would you say is outdated/ misleading:
There's a difference between LiSP (liquidity providers) and LaSP (lightning as a service provider).
Any public routing node could be a LiSP, but not all LaSP can be also.
LSPs usually offer only private channels to normal users. And using Simple Taproot Channels is adding more privacy. The foottprint onchain is almost not different than any other regular tx.
Even with Phoenix, running your own phoennixd server you can use it as a decoy, in front of another private or public LN node....
There's not even a mention of 0-fee channels... when you can literally use them as decoy with another public/private node... without even leaving behind any onchain trace.
Also not even a single mention about trampoline channels.
The art of using LN is to use all its features in your advantage as a decoy. But few go soo deep into that part, they stop only on the routing part or just using Phoenix. But that is only 10% or less of you can do with LN...
Do you see something like Phoenix as a liquidity provider or a lightning as a service provider?
With Phoenix mobile, you can only open a channel to the Phoenix node. The same is true for Lexe (as far as I can tell). So, while they are providing liquidity to me, it is also the case that I cannot use the wallet unless I make a channel to their node. This sounds more like Lightning as a service.
But when I read your distinction above, what I thought of as lightning as a service provider was things like Cashu, Spark, and arkade (you use their network and they offer you a lightning gateway as a service).
As always, I have this feeling that I need to read your guides again (actually, I don't think I've read all of them).
Yes, is a LaSP. Any walled garden provider (that let's you open a channel only with their node) is a lightning as a service.
But is nothing wrong with that, as long as you know how to use it properly.
Cashu, Spark, Ark are other things, different predators, worse than a lightning as a service.
I will tell you a use case for a phoenixd server (not the normal Phoenix wallet).
You run a LNbits, BTCPay server, AlbyHub with the phoenixd server as backend fundinng source. This is easy to manage your liquidity for the front end of a shop/business running those apps (LNbits etc)
But the fun part comes after that, when you need to swap your funds from that phoenixd node so you will have again space for receiving more payments.
You can do it directly with their ACINQ integrated swap service but also you can use a decoy node or a 3rd party swap service. If you are smart, you can do it WITHOUT leaving any trace related with your phoenixd node and final destination (onchain).
Another thing that these "privacy sites" omit is that through a single meaningless LN channel you can pass through INFINITE amount of sats. When (if) you close that channel, the only trace remained is the final output of that closing tx...
There are many aspects of LN privacy that in these pages are blatantly ignoring, idk if is because lack of knowledge or simply they have an agenda...
You have to take in consideration that LN literally killed a lot of haters, shitcoiners and other businesses that rely on non-LN services, but they still trying to hit on LN.
Please submit a PR or an issue to the repo with what you think should be added (including any sources/links you want me to refrence), I will be sure to add it. I'm just writing this in my spare time, I'm don't know everything on lightning so community suggestions are welcome.
I hope you consider it.
This was an important revelation for me. I remember seeing you write about it and I had a channel some time ago which I used in this manner. It was pretty awesome to think that my small little channel could move many times it's size in sats.
I had the same revelation in 2019 when I started my first LN node.
I was playing around, learning and one day when my shitiest channel was empty I made a swap-in from onchain and repeat the process over and over.
I realized how many sats I pass through that damn channel when I close it and saw that the only information remained was just a tiny amount from the channel reserve (I close it when it was empty). On the block explorer was just appearing as a regular tx showing that I "sent" to last destination address X amount of sats (the size of the channel) but not all the swap-ins, that were multiple times more than initial opening.