Years later Lightning Address came along and became a success, because it allowed for an easy to write & read handle.
Soon even custodial wallets started using Lightning Address and this later lead to widespread usage on nostr.
It's a succession of events that lead to the current situation.
So as it stands now, non-custodial LN wallets are losing on walkover to custodial wallets, where you have easy access to a Lightning Address.
My Lightning Box solution tries its best to work within this framework that has been developed and gives a sound alternative to using a 100% custodial and trusted Lightning Address solution.
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This Lightning Address is special.
When you pay to it, my Lightning Box solution will forward the request to the phone, where Blixt Wallet respond with an invoice.
This is the first time a self-custodial LN wallet supports Lightning Address.
This is part of my on-going work to support receiving via Lightning Address for mobile self-custodial wallets.
https://github.com/hsjoberg/lightning-box
Android supports foreground services, meaning that Blixt Wallet can stay online all the time to answer incoming requests (no effect on battery).
Though the normal mode of operation for Lightning Box is that it'll take the payment on behalf of the user and then next time the user opens wallet, it will auto-withdraw from the Box, thanks to LNURL-withdraw.
But if the wallet is online already, it can just forward the request.
Other technologies such as BOLT12, especially with "async payments", could help steer people away from Lightning address.
But it cannot fully replace it, because the primary value proposition of Lightning Address is an easy to read and write handle, which BOLT12 doesn't have.
It's possible we can do some neat "spacechain DNS with BOLT12/BOLT11 AMP" and whatnot, so I'm open to possible ideas.