Latest in LN UX (the best it gets) is still overly complicated.

I was just reading a thread about the latest Eclair wallet. It's amazing to think that people would put themselves through this...especially when Eclair (supposedly) represents the epitome of the user experience on LN.

Instead of the ideal user experience of download app, use app to send/recv. Done. We have, based just on things changed in the latest update (i.e., by no means an exhaustive list):

1. If you want to be able to receive funds, you have to explicitly enable that feature!
2. May have to manually close old channels if remote refund delay on those channels is 144 blocks, because, of course, that's not high enough, silly!
3. Make sure app does not lose connectivity for too long, else you might lose funds.
4. Be sure to remember to watch for notifications of cheating attempts.
5. Watch for notifications that the background watcher is not working; not advice given on what to do it it's not?
6. If you can first get over the fact that the maximum send amount isn't simply your balance, and that there is a limit on the receive amount, then the advertised maximum send/recv amounts may not be be a good guide, because the values displayed are wrong (release notes call it "optimistic") and include values in unconfirmed channels.
7. Need to know what a liquidity service is, why you need one, how to setup/configure it, and that you need to trust it, on the trust-less LN.

Good times folks; where do I sign up my friends? I mean, where do I sign up my friends for the month long course in how to use this mess?

Reference/source material:

https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair-mobile/releases/tag/v0.4.2-MAINNET

Enabling receive over Lightning This feature must be explicitely [sic] enabled by the user. To do so, she first may have to close old existing channels (if their remote refund delay is 144 blocks which is not high enough). Enabling the feature will also display a message warning the user that she has to make sure that the app doesn't lose internet connectivity for two weeks straight.

Background watcher A service periodically runs in the background, starting a light process (see CheckElectrumSetup) that connects to an electrum server and checks the blockchain. In case a cheating attempt is detected, a notification will be displayed to the user, urging her to start the application as soon as possible. If this background watcher cannot run or connect to the internet, after a while, a message will inform the user.

A display on top of the channels' list (right-hand panel in the home page) has been added, summarizing the total amount that can currently be received or sent over Lightning. Note that this amount is optimistic, meaning that funds in unconfirmed channels will be taken into account, and that this amount is aggregated and may not be sent/received in a single payment.

Liquidity Service When opening a channel to ACINQ's mainnet node, the user can also request this node to open a channel back for a small fee, using the push mechanism.

Written by: PaidSockPuppet
Source: https://ift.tt/2V3TycD