- The tool is called AcceptLN and uses the Bitcoin Lightning network.
- If the recipient of the funds has never used Bitcoin, they can take their first steps with AcceptLN.
A tool called AcceptLN allows anyone with an email or email address to receive bitcoins. To this end, it uses the Lightning micropayment network, which allows quick transfers with low fees. The potential of this technology is great, because it does not matter if the recipient of the funds has never used Bitcoin and, moreover, almost anyone has an email address.
The advertisement from LN Markets, a company focused on derivatives trading through the Lightning network, shows that Using AcceptLN is easy: “If you want to send sats (minimum unit of a bitcoin) to someone, just enter their email address on the AcceptLN website, enter the amount and pay the fee.”
The mechanism is simple. The AcceptLN node receives the bitcoin sats and sends an email to the recipient of the funds, informing them that someone has sent them money on the Lightning network. If this is your first Bitcoin and Lightning payment, the website guides you through setting up your first wallet. This way you get the funds by pasting an invoice. In addition, the LN Markets team seems to be working on soon adding withdrawals to LNURL, a tool that allows you to create invoices in a simplified way, connecting wallets to third-party services.
The service is custodial, because people have to deposit the funds that they expect the recipient to accept in a node, after creating a wallet. However, The AcceptLN team does not intend the tool to be used as a method of storing bitcoins and they encourage people to withdraw their funds and manage their money: if the recipient does not withdraw the money within 60 days, they charge a commission.
The LN Markets team suggests that this tool can be combined with Nostr Wallet Connect to offer a similar experience to Mutiny Gifts “from the sender’s point of view: the funds are not transferred to the custody of AcceptLN, but are requested from the wallet of the sender when the receiver tries to complain. (However, the sender’s wallet must be online at the same time, which is not suitable for mobile wallets.)
This is not the only way to use the Lightning network for personal bitcoin payments. At the end of 2021, Lightning Adress was opened, a service “like sending bitcoin by email,” as Cripto Noticias reported at the time.
