Phoenix Wallet 4+

I run my own CLN and LND nodes that I access through Zeus. But, I also like to have a “hot” Lightning wallet easily available too for times when the Tor network that I use to access my own node is slow or being picky.

Phoenix is awesome. It opens up channels for you automatically as needed. It can even accept on chain BTC and converts it to be available on Lightning and allows swaps out back to on chain with the cost just being the miner fee. Very slick!

I’ve moved my go to Lightning wallet from Muun to Phoenix for these reasons.

I have heard many good things about this app and wanted to try it for myself.

Although I am familiar with the technology I am still learning.

There were a few large problems which prevented me from giving it a higher star review.

Namely the channel management, opening and closing, and all that good stuff is not exactly clear.

For instance I sent myself 2 payments over the lightning network and the total balance was nowhere near what I had calculated.

It should have been 150,000 sats and it only displayed 130,000.

The app did not tell you where the rest of it was. You kind of had to figure it out for yourself and look around the back end and do some weird channel math. Totally not going to fly if you are on boarding people.

Next, I know it's self custodial and all that but the fees are way higher than I was anticipating. Like 0.5% + 3000 sats for each LN payment. That's higher than on chain!! That's not a good deal. If you send your money back-and-forth 40 times you have no more money left. It's kind of like Visa.

For what it is worth I still give it three stars because at least I can actually send and receive. Quite a few of the other well positioned in the market lightning apps can't even do that. One of them rhymes with the word moon.

Still very optimistic and hopeful for the technology. I'll try it again in a few months and update this if anything changes.

As simple and easy to setup and use as any lightning wallet i’ve ever seen. What a simple, easy way to quickly and easily spend Bitcoin. This actually makes buying things with BTC downright convenient!