The other day @brianoflondon asked on Twitter if Hive users would like to have the option of @v4vapp on HiveEngine tokens. I said no for me personally because I haven't even used the regular option, but at the same time people on Hive seem to love getting around that pesky wrapping/unwrapping fee... which is possible to do with volume back and forth and a little bit of a bankroll. This is nothing new, Leofinance and BeeSwap have done the same thing to undercut the fee to a lower number.

For those who are perhaps unaware, v4v.app is a way for anyone on Hive turn swap a tiny bit of HIVE/HBD into sats on the Lightning Network. It's actually pretty cool, but I've had little reason to use it because I never had a LN account or wallet or node or anything else. I also have never seen a vendor accepting payment on LN, so there is that as well.

However, after trying to use NOSTR a few weeks back I did in fact set up a LN wallet in the form of a Chrome extension called Alby recommended by Brian. So I figured it was time to test out v4v and report back on my experience.

To start it looks like a website from the 90's

Ah nostalgia... I like this look.
It's functional.
When I create something it will look like this as well.

Brian seems to know the frontend is 'lackluster' and reported on Twitter today that he just took a course on vue.js on Udemy. Vue is a frontend protocol for websites that uses modules to make it look prettier, so we can probably expect a makeover at some point.

So I'm looking at this webpage, and I'll be honest I'm not quite sure what to do. It clearly says "Hive to Lightning" right there. That's legit all it says. Obviously this is where I need to be but it's not what I'm expecting.

What I'm expecting is how every other service does it (including centralized exchanges). I send money to the v4v account with a memo that contains my public key on LN... and then v4v will send sats to that account contained within the memo.

That's not an available option here, and I have to admit muh brain has a hard learning new things when it thinks it already knows how it should work, but apparently doesn't work that way. Puts me in a loop of inaction of trying to figure out how to do it the way I know how to do it.

Then I noticed this:

My Alby wallet was colored blue instead of yellow... hm, that's weird. I quickly figured out that this means Alby is connected to the v4v website. Makes sense. So I clicked on it...

This is what I saw... so I clicked "Receive" because this is what I would normally do to get my public key.

But wait...

I... don't have a public key?
I have to tell the wallet how much in advance and create an invoice for it?
Da fuk is this?!
Give me a public key... damn it!

So then I'm left wondering if I even have a public key. I start thinking back to the conversations @starkerz and @theycallmedan have had about LN. "Forcing everyone to run their own node is dumb; it's not going to work."

And I realize that I haven't set up my own node, so perhaps I don't even have a public key... this is probably just a custodian account that technically alby.com controls. Because of these technicalities I have no keys and I have to create this special "invoice" in advance to get muh monies.

Looking at my Alby account seems to confirm this.

Looks like I have a NOSTR public and private key... but also Alby clearly has access to my private key on NOSTR as well. Looks like maybe I can send money directly to edicted@getalby.com, but again I'm not sure and honestly I don't care at this point... I just wanted to test v4v app and get some damn money into my damn account. So I create an invoice for 100k sats... that's a good number... right?

Boom

I get my invoice and copy/paste it into the v4v site.

I click HBD because dollars schomallars.

I don't need no stinkin dollars.

OOOoooOOO Fancy!

v4v uses encrypted communications so that the data is not stored on chain in a readable format. That's a pretty cool privacy feature!

So anyway I hit send and it works instantly.

Like seriously though... instantly... let me test it again just to be sure.

Hm k maybe not instantly but still very fast.

Tested it a third time and it was like 5 seconds.
The one-block-irreversibility Hive upgrade hard at work.
Our layer one + Bitcoin's layer 2 is only a combined 5 second lag.
Pretty sweet.

The point here is that Hive is super fast and Brian's LN node is also fast, so these swaps can happen quite quickly which is pretty cool. The wait time for something like this is impressive considering alternative routes.

But what will do you with the sats?

I have no idea, my account is worth $31 who cares.
I did the thing.
We did it.
Hurray.

And I'd do it again too!

Rethinking about todays question, it would be pretty nice for something like this to be directly connected to LEO. The ability to go to and from the Lightning Network with LEO blazing fast like this would be pretty cool. Them maximalists aren't going to give up on LN development anytime soon. They're very impressed with themselves. Infrastructure will grow. Count on it.

MIN/MAX requirements

We can see here that you shouldn't swap super low amounts. Doing the minimum invoice at 1000 sats results in a 20% tax. 13,333 sats is the equilibrium point where both the flat fee and the percent fee are the same. At these prices 13,333 sats is around $3.76 so going lower than that results in a higher than 1.5% fee. MAX invoice is 500k sats which is $141 right now so this bridge is only meant for people looking to get a little bit of sats into LN for the most part. Obviously transferring sats back to Hive is an option as well but I'm not sure if I would use this bridge for that purpose. Maybe.

Of course I'm assuming that the fee is the greater of the two (which is the standard in finance)... but on further review it looks like both fees could be taken. The post that explains this in greater detail is unclear about this issue. @brianoflondon you should explicitly state if both fees are charged or just the greater of the two. The examples given are from 2021 and I don't really feel like looking up spot price of Hive and BTC on that day and making the calculation.

...

Just kidding I couldn't let it go and did the math: he's charging both fees, which is fine... it should just be stated as such. Also it looks like he has a bot that updates his examples from that link every day with new numbers based on the current market price... which I find impressive. My recommendation to avoid high fees is doing swaps $5 or more. Even then 1.5%+ fee is high but also customary for bridges like this that solely exist as a low volume entry-point for bootstrapping to/from a new network. @deathwing likes to pull this maneuver as well for EVM connections. Not having gas on an EVM chain is no good.

Conclusion

My first time experience with the v4v app was surprisingly confusing. I'm usually a pretty good person to test stuff on because my HDHD in combination with chronic back/shoulder pain result in an almost crippling learning disability. It can take me a while to figure new stuff out and I usually have some insightful things to say about onboarding newbies when the process of being a newbie is still fresh in my mind.

Definitely might want to doubly remind users they need to make that weird invoice because you don't really see that kind of thing anywhere else. LN is weird like that. Although maybe it's not v4v's job to teach noobs how the LN works. Just a suggestion. It def threw me off a bit.

Having connections and bridges like this to the Lightning Network can only reinforce Hive's utility as more and more infrastructure gets built. We also need to be thinking about DEXes and trying to get a ThorChain listing and whatnot. Interoperability is key.

https://peakd.com/me/witnesses

Oh yeah and vote for @brianoflondon's witness.