Nostreon
jb55
July 19, 2023
Running a merch store with no web servers?
Running web stores should be easier. Check out my plan for running a merch store using only a lightning node.
I’m so lazy I’m thinking of running the damus merch store via stateless and serverless lightning payment links. All data is collected and stored in the lightning invoice descriptions which are fetched from your node. You can do this without having to run any server code except a lightning node!
This is the same tech we used when selling merch as at bitcoin Miami. It was extremely reliable. I love these things, they are so easy. Integrating with the legacy fiat system is such a pita, It may just be a lightning-only store for now because of how simple this is. Here's what a lightning payment link looks like:
How it works
The entire product page is stored as data in the url. When a customer click the link, the product info is decoded and rendered as a webpage. The data in the url includes
- The product name
- Description
- Price in sats
- Product image url
- Fields to collect data from the user
- Lightning node address
- Lightning node rune for fetching and waiting for invoice payments
This works thanks to a javascript library I created called "lnsocket". It allows you to connect to your CLN node over websockets. Once the user fills out all of the info, a new lightning invoice is fetched with this information in the description, by connecting directly to your node. This connection is end-to-end encrypted thanks to the lightning protocol itself.
To your lightning node, it looks like another lightning node is connecting to it, but in reality it's just a dumb client asking for things.
At this point, custom lightning packets called "commando" packets are sent to your node which asks your node to run certain commands. CLN authenticates these packets using the rune and then returns a response. This is pretty much the same as calling these commands directly on your lightning node, except now someone is doing it from a browser in a secure way!
Why not just run btcpayserver?
btcpayserver is cool and is more powerful, but I like exploring simpler ways to do things that don't require running lots of software which can be challenging for many non-technical people. You shouldn't have to become a server administrator to start accepting payments. It should be as simple as running a bitcoin and lightning node, pushing all of the application logic to the clients.
This is a similar philosophy to what we have in the nostr space. Let's make it easier for people to use self-sovereign tools. Everyone deserves freedom tech.
Anyways, I'm still working on https://lnlink.org. I just added images and nostr address support! You can make your own payment links here! Try it out: