Franco (Castamatic)

https://podcastindex.social/@francosolerio

Developer of Castamatic Podcast Player for iOS. Founder, host and producer at https://digitalia.fm tech show. Sailor. Doctor in the spare time.

Public Key

npub18pr4z7kxrnnnxl57qvztrehac9qtrznqtnss44xuhhzpzr76duss5d4h6r

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrs3630trpeeen060qxp93um7uzs933fs9ecg26nwtm3q3pldx7ggprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntnyev5p

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub18pr4z7kxrnnnxl57qvztrehac9qtrznqtnss44xuhhzpzr76duss5d4h6r

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Last Notes

2026-01-14 12:18:44 GMT

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I'm doing tests using https://api.getalby.com/lnurl/lightning-address-details When I get both LnUrl and keysend info I used to prioritize keysend for reasons, but for some addresses payments fail. eg. [email protected] -

2026-01-10 09:59:46 GMT

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Got it now! I’m so used to reading bug reports and feature requests that I didn’t realize you were just happily using it. Glad it felt good 🤙

2026-01-05 14:55:35 GMT

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you mean unsubscribe didn't remove the shows?

2025-12-30 16:01:27 GMT

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I think for the time being I will put an expiration date and purge payments data older than a couple of months. If the podcaster is interested in collecting them I'm sure he will do it sooner.

2025-12-30 15:55:07 GMT

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thank you. I was a little worried about record number explosion for streaming payments + multiple splits in the small server I'm running on. But maybe it's just useless premature optimization.

2025-12-30 15:47:59 GMT

@npub1xwj…hxpm @npub1cwm…wcs6 I’m working on a BoostBox API implementation for Castamatic and I have a quick question. When sending multiple splits for a single payment, do you post a single metadata object to the BoostBox API server and reference it in the comment of each split transaction, or do you create multiple entries, one for each split transaction?

2025-12-15 17:50:44 GMT

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do you know if the chapter generation is performed on device or server side?

2025-11-24 12:21:50 GMT

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It’s worth understanding how much traffic hosted nodes on Alby and other wallet services can actually handle. If we all shift to LNURL, will bigger shows eventually need to run their own node? How big are we talking?

2025-11-19 08:07:09 GMT

Castamatic 12 is out, with Liquid Glass UI, adaptive player color, new animations, new sleep timer UI, and many bug fixes. https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/castamatic-podcast-player/id966632553?mt=8

2025-11-06 22:02:07 GMT

Castamatic is almost ready for the new iOS look, plus many bug fixes and improvements. Beta available on TestFlight: http://castamatic.com/beta

2025-10-31 23:25:03 GMT

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Alby Hub is quite an amazing piece of software

2025-10-30 12:20:29 GMT

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correct, I was thinking about DNS and wrote VPN. Thank you

2025-10-30 12:11:17 GMT

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what kind of ad blocker are you testing with? VPN based like Pi-hole or system plugins?

2025-10-27 16:10:33 GMT

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how noisy a modern house generator is? Can you record a show while the generator is running if your studio is not soundproof?

2025-09-18 15:41:41 GMT

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Ciao Oscar, is there any Swift library implementing at least the parts of nostr you are using for metadata?

2025-09-11 09:52:23 GMT

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your words really touched a chord, we are all in this together.

2025-09-06 19:43:54 GMT

Castamatic 11.0.6 is out now with support for Lightning Address and LNURL-pay.
If the LNAddress provides keysend data, Castamatic will use it as the primary method to send payments along with metadata.
If only LNURL-pay data is available, the app will still send the payment, but without metadata.

2025-08-04 19:48:44 GMT

@npub1fmx…wp74 What is the canonical URL for NoAgenda? PodcastIndex says http://feed.nashownotes.com/rss.xml, but this url permanent redirects (301) to https://feeds.noagendaassets.com/noagenda.xml. Castamatic updates its subscription following the redirect, and listens for podpings reporting https://feeds.noagendaassets.com/noagenda.xml. But they never come, because your podpings contain http://feed.nashownotes.com/rss.xml. The result is Castamatic users don't get podpings for NoAgenda. I'm a little at loss here.

2025-07-07 16:08:55 GMT

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it did, I received feature requests and bug reports telling me they subscribed to Castamatic premium because they heard about it on No Agenda.

2025-07-07 13:58:57 GMT

@npub1fmx…wp74 thank you for all the love for Castamatic on NA1775 ❤️

2025-06-20 17:51:39 GMT

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version on the app store now is more recent than the one on TestFlight

2025-06-20 17:07:09 GMT

Big update! Castamatic now supports live podcasts and instant alerts. Get notified the moment a show goes live or a new episode drops—powered by Podping. https://castamatic.com/jekyll/2025/06/20/castamatic-11/

2025-06-17 06:23:02 GMT

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The Polish have historically been the strongest winter mountaineers, they were the first to summit many of the eight-thousanders in winter. If anyone knows how to sleep in the cold, it’s them. You’re in good hands. 🥶

2025-06-14 15:29:23 GMT

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podcast:guid simply fixes podcasting. There is no way to code an app without bugs that catalogs items without having a way to distinguish and identify every instance of such items. If only it could be made mandatory…

2025-06-05 20:58:07 GMT

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thank you Sam

2025-06-05 20:56:25 GMT

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Thank you Brian

2025-06-05 19:05:26 GMT

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thank you

2025-05-31 11:08:07 GMT

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I've been looking into nostr, mostly out of curiosity, and still can’t tell if it's great or very bad. I’m interested in knowing more about the reasons you consider the protocol flawed.

2025-05-27 22:16:47 GMT

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Apart from multiplying network traffic, moving on without a shared way to transmit metadata means everybody will implement a different system, and app developers will have to work on supporting all of them, or incur on the wrath of users. Remember app developers always bear that cross: every little malfunction, every glitch caused by malformed data in a feed will lead to a bad review for the app or an angry email to the developer.

2025-05-27 17:58:40 GMT

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In the words of the @npub1fmx…wp74 V4V needs a feedback loop between listeners and podcasters. If I can't tell the name of who sent money, and can’t read their message, how do I close the loop? You all keep saying many wallets support lnaddress only, not a single one is available here in Europe. I think you are running too fast and panicking for an issue that is not really that urgent.

2025-05-27 17:39:26 GMT

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it would be good to agree on a shared solution to transmit metadata before breaking v4v

2025-05-27 17:31:41 GMT

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I really don't appreciate to be forced to do something. And I still don't see any simple, shared and agreed upon way to transmit payment metadata. Sending sats without metadata is not V4V, it's just sending money, it can be done with paypal or a credit card transaction.

2025-05-16 09:55:04 GMT

@npub1g2v…achf Hello John. The podping websocket service has been sending zero podpings in the last 90 minutes. Maybe some process is down or frozen?

2025-05-14 21:44:56 GMT

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“update” podpings

2025-05-14 08:34:00 GMT

Still working on podping for Castamatic: often a new episode appears with no podping coming, particularly with shows hosted on Redcircle and with NoAgenda. @npub1g2v…achf Is it possible that your websocket service misses some notifications or is the error at the source?

2025-04-30 22:03:33 GMT

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metadata support / TLV record is important too

2025-04-16 08:55:49 GMT

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will do, not a priority. Is there a consensus about how to send payment metadata?

2025-03-30 18:26:49 GMT

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Please include a way to disambiguate which of the servers contain the canonical version of the feed. Same feed from multiple urls is a nightmare for syncing between devices, deduplication and listening to podping. 😅

2025-03-28 11:08:06 GMT

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Thank you for your post. Making podping and live shows work with iOS constraints is a little challenging. I have to study a little more, then I'll share a couple of thoughts about what the rough parts are and maybe what could improve the situation.

2025-03-24 22:41:31 GMT

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sorry, absolutely no idea. I just got that in P2.0 and imagined it can affect many other shows. How do you tell what is the canonical url to put in the original_url column?

2025-03-22 12:35:29 GMT

@npub1rcn…dw4h Maybe using <atom:link rel=self> inside the feed to express the canonical url might solve the issue of disambiguating multiple urls per feed? If a client is subscribed to a non-canonical url, it will never get podpings for that show.

2025-03-10 16:20:43 GMT

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That’s unfortunate news. I would rather not send 30 push notifications to a mobile device, as it would trigger 30 network updates for that podcast without any new episodes. This could lead to users experiencing excessive battery consumption (and trashing my app in reviews). Additionally, I’d prefer not to develop a second feed parser for my server. I’ll need to explore some kind of throttling system instead.

2025-03-10 15:26:57 GMT

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yes, they always signal "update" as a reason

2025-03-10 14:26:56 GMT

Does spam exist on Podping? Example: I’m testing for Castamatic, and I’ve been receiving podpings all day for feeds.redcircle.com/87f6766d-e6e5-43c5-93d2-045a488941ad without any new episodes being released. This would complicate my plans a lot.

2025-02-08 11:56:37 GMT

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Great! How do you send boost metadata for lnaddress payments? @npub1fmx…wp74 @npub18a6…pny4 @npub1rcn…dw4h

2025-01-27 17:47:04 GMT

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This looks promising: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4911062/pulling-track-info-from-an-audio-stream-using-php/4914538#4914538

2025-01-26 17:43:14 GMT

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nope

2025-01-26 12:08:43 GMT

@npub1rcn…dw4h RE: display ice/shoutcast metadata on the same web page as the player. I broadcast my podcast’s live shows using a Liquidsoap script which, among other things, writes the metadata to a file on S3. The player embedded on the webpage then retrieves and displays this metadata. https://digitalia.fm/live

2025-01-25 20:49:09 GMT

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thank you Brian

2025-01-25 15:01:54 GMT

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great. where is your api documented?

2025-01-25 13:53:58 GMT

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great. How large would normally be the result of the request for 24 hours of pings?

2025-01-25 11:05:50 GMT

Looking into podping. What an awful mess is Hive documentation! Where do I find some basic docs explaining how do I connect to a node and fetch (podping) posts without using prebuilt JS/Python libraries (there are none for Swift)? I just want to connect (rest API, websocket..) fetch and keep fetching new posts.

2025-01-24 14:21:43 GMT

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I’m not against servers. I prefer when I can to rely on the users device. Ideally servers should be open source, implement an open API and interchangeable between many vendors / implementations, like iTunes API vs Podcast Index. NWC might be a good way for that.

2025-01-24 14:20:05 GMT

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That is one of the reasons. I've got other reasons too (maintenance and costs are the main ones). I rely on servers too (PodcastIndex, iCloud), but they are for accessory functions, not for the main app purpose.

2025-01-24 08:16:18 GMT

That’s why Castamatic has no server component. You choose what to listen to—no one else. A podcast app that receives episodes through a server isn’t truly a podcast app; it’s just a front end for someone else’s media distribution service. You might trust who runs the service now, but who knows who will come next?
(unfortunately the same goes for app stores, computing platforms and mobile OS)
https://podnews.net/article/apple-podcasts-china

2025-01-20 19:46:35 GMT

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no errors here, but I'm not sure if iOS APIs would shield the app from such errors

2024-12-25 14:41:34 GMT

Jesus’ message of love for one another is universal, reaching beyond any creed, religion, or belief. Let’s love one another as much as we can—I certainly love you all!

2024-12-21 12:04:42 GMT

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yep, I was just exploring the possibilities. For payments (NWC), boostagrams etc it might be enough to connect when app is running in the front. Cross app comments might work ok on nostr too, but missing background updates might make the user experience sub optimal.

2024-12-21 11:54:39 GMT

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Of course background downloads is the tool of choice, you ask the os to download some URLs, the app goes to sleep and is awaken when the request completes. But it supports http url requests only, no websocket. That's why I was asking.

2024-12-21 11:33:37 GMT

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on iOS apps can run in background WHILE playing audio. An audio playing app that is not playing audio cannot run continuosly in the background. I can request a background fetch at the discretion of the OS, usually every 15-30 minutes, max 15-30 seconds time. Is it enough for, say, requesting an rss feed like @npub18a6…pny4 was doing? Or maybe 50-100 different rss feeds?

2024-12-21 11:06:46 GMT

I've been studying Nostr in the last few weeks. It looks quite interesting. My main question at this point is: has anyone done any test on how and if is it possible to run websocket queries on mobile when the app is in the background?

2024-12-19 19:47:59 GMT

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Maybe they changed something in iOS audio libraries. They never tell.

2024-12-19 19:18:58 GMT

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Hello Brian. Nope, nothing in the audio player changed in the last year, maybe more.

2024-12-10 21:13:37 GMT

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Hi Sam. Existing Alby wallets will not be discontinued entirely. While they are now deprecated, their value remains intact and will be converted into Alby tokens, which can be seamlessly transferred to the Alby Hub. Messages like this, however, can feel somewhat inelegant. @npub1glq…4zwa @npub13cg…ck4q @npub1fmx…wp74 @npub1rcn…dw4h

2024-12-08 23:23:13 GMT

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100% agree Adam, but Strike not being available in my country, PayPal and Venmo maybe will one day who knows, everything tells me maybe times are not mature for the normies, let's hope AlbyHub works for some of them.

2024-12-08 16:15:08 GMT

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There might also be some confusion between Alby supporting lnaddress lookup in their API (maybe this: https://guides.getalby.com/developer-guide/alby-wallet-api/lightning-address-details-proxy) and Alby providing lightning addresses for podcasters who self-host wallets. It seemed to me @npub1fmx…wp74 was asking about the latter in the episode.

2024-12-08 11:50:15 GMT

Currently running Alby Hub in a 7USD/month VPS on DigitalOcean, consuming 2% cpu. Running it at home on a pc with an always on internet connection should be even easier.

2024-12-08 11:49:20 GMT

I really like Alby Hub! While the “Albypocalypse” predicted by @npub1fmx…wp74 and @npub1rcn…dw4h (with 99% of users dropping) might still happen, maybe it could turn out to be a storm in a teacup. (or something in between)

2024-12-08 11:42:59 GMT

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I migrated my AlbyHub from one VPS to another this morning with AH internal backup and restore system and it worked flawlessly.

2024-12-06 21:37:15 GMT

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Trying 100sats boosts right now. I always get back error code 6 - keysend payment failed from Alby API when connected to coinos wallet.
https://cdn.masto.host/podcastindexsocial/media_attachments/files/113/608/034/275/902/252/original/d426dd5531b5a4a9.png

2024-11-30 19:26:09 GMT

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you are right, trying to send a boost from Castamatic times out. I'm removing the original post until we understand more.

2024-11-30 19:19:32 GMT

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Thank you, I just sent some sats via Alby Go. I'll do some more tests.

2024-11-30 19:05:56 GMT

For those who don't want to host their own wallet with AlbyHub, connecting Coinos to Alby via NWC seems to work like charm.
Click on the settings icon on the right of the balance on the main page of your coinos account, copy the nwc secret string, go to Alby -> Wallet configuration then link nwc wallet pasting the secret string you copied on coinos. https://coinos.io

2024-11-30 17:24:22 GMT

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🖖

2024-11-30 17:01:42 GMT

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thank you. Sorry for my misunderstanding. Peace and love ☮️

2024-11-30 16:41:09 GMT

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being the only one expressing concern about possible issues I guess I am the "bitcher" you are talking about.

2024-11-29 21:32:53 GMT

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I understand this might be necessary, and I love you and I'm greatful for your efforts trying to provide a solution. I just don’t like hearing we are not over-complicating. We are so distant from the simplicity of podcasting: one xml file and a bunch of mp3s. And probably that was a big part of the success of podcasting. @npub1rcn…dw4h

2024-11-29 21:27:38 GMT

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one more thing… the lnaddress might be two different things, that have the exact same format and no way to tell them apart, other than making one, or two network calls to see if one of them exists. And retry if network call fails, and caching, and misconfigurations of servers… This is what I call over-complicating.

2024-11-29 21:14:36 GMT

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Fountain operates from a server and all that network calls come almost for free. On a mobile only app that's a completely different thing. And each different call might fail for a number of reasons, and you have to retry, up to a point, and fail gracefully, and coordinate payments and messages…

2024-11-29 21:13:24 GMT

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first thing is the multiplication of network traffic. Before it was (1) download and parse rss feed, parse the keysend address, (2) make a network call to alby to send many keysends in one shot. Now we have to download the feed, make a call to resolve each recipient’s lnaddress, for each recipient request an invoice, pay the invoice, generate the message, send the message to a nostr relay. Some feeds have 10 different recipients, don’t even let me started on remote items…

2024-11-29 19:44:32 GMT

Best part of last episode of P2.0 was Oscar saying “we don’t want to overcomplicate things”. Quite a peculiar meaning of not complicated. 😅

2024-11-25 16:11:17 GMT

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well, if that is the case Podcasting 2.0 and other shows doing that won't be able to receive boosts and streams via Castamatic for some months. Is it ok for @npub1rcn…dw4h @npub1fmx…wp74 and their listeners for you to dictate the timeline of this hard migration?

2024-11-25 16:04:45 GMT

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will the two addresses (LNAddress and node + customKey/customValue) coexist in the feed SF generates?

2024-11-25 14:45:51 GMT

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Any idea about what happened with the on chain swap?

2024-11-25 14:40:09 GMT

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my 5 cents suggestion: when the user tries to open a public channel, and he already has one or more private channels, stop him and make the UI show him a big alert telling to close the private channels before opening the public one.

2024-11-25 14:30:17 GMT

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this is getting very confusing very fast. I’ve been writing with you webchat support since 12:30 (they respond a sentence every couple of hours), and all I know now is: public and private channels together are bad, I already moved 750€ to Alby to open channels. Some of them went away in fees. I tried (as suggested) to move funds to saving via Boltz swap and lost half of the sats I moved.

2024-11-25 11:47:54 GMT

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if I click increase it makes me create yet another channel, and if I make it public, it has 0 receiving capacity.

2024-11-25 11:22:05 GMT

I created another public channel with 500k sats capacity, and this too has 0sats receiving capacity. And now I cannot drain Alby hosted Balance with error no route. What am I doing wrong? @npub1glq…4zwa
https://cdn.masto.host/podcastindexsocial/media_attachments/files/113/543/329/965/462/565/original/8c2bc679ea4484ca.png

2024-11-25 10:06:08 GMT

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The specs don’t mention a switch-off time and contemplate both node and lnaddress possibilities. Is there a way to have the two options at the same time in the feed? That would make the transition a little smoother.

2024-11-25 08:58:36 GMT

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Why trivial? Did Alby add some API methods to resolve the addresses?

2024-11-24 10:54:24 GMT

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I have a thousand questions 😁
Now when keysend payments come to my old address on Alby they are deposited in the old wallet and I have to manually move them to Alby Hub. I guess that will stop working when the old wallets are deprecated and I have to put my new lightning address in the rss feed of my podcast.
Will the transactions coming on the new address be logged in the Alby web account, so I can generate and download my reports with the Alby API as I've been doing until now?

2024-11-24 10:34:51 GMT

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I have 3 accounts on Alby, one to receive sats from the listeners of my podcast, one to receive fees from the users of Castamatic, one personal that I use for streaming sats when I listen to podcasts. I need to mantain separate reports for the first 2 for tax reasons. Moving those to 3 different Alby Hub instances would be a little too much.

2024-11-24 10:24:45 GMT

BTW, I cannot find the option to host multiple wallets on Alby Hub. I'm using the Docker version on an Arm/X86 Ubuntu VPS. Any hint?

2024-11-24 10:23:05 GMT

2 days with Alby Hub, it's a pretty good product. For my use as a podcaster self custody is a great feeling. For normie listeners the big show-stopper is the channel management thing. I think being presented with the request to pay to activate a channel first thing before being able to send boosts or stream sats will make 90% of my actual users drop V4V, and probably stop 99% of new users.

2024-11-23 15:13:21 GMT

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I think we need a “big Alby”, same kind of interoperability and functionality, but with enough meat to be compliant to laws and regulations. Ideally more than one "big alby” with a common API.

2024-11-23 15:08:41 GMT

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I see your restaurant case, but it looks different to me. The restaurant locks client's credit then the client uses that to buy restaurant's food. Money is not transmitted to a third party. You cannot go to the mall and buy food with restaurant’s credits. V4V is not an app selling you podcasts. It's letting you pay/donate to podcasters. It’s more similar to a debit card than to gift certificates.

2024-11-23 12:01:46 GMT

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It is not cost prohibitive, it is simply illegal, at least here in Italy. Or at least you should be prepared to spend enough money, time and resources to try to convince a judge that taking money from user, storing them, and sending them on user behalf is not "transmitting money”.

2024-11-23 11:55:30 GMT

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If you take money from users, store them as "tokens”, then use them to pay money to other entities (podcasters), you are transmitting money. It doesn't matter if you store them as euro, dollars, btc or magic banana cookies, you are still transmitting value, and as such money, and you are regulated as a money transmitter. At least that's how it works in Italy, and I think in all EU area.

2024-11-15 11:28:11 GMT

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thank you

2024-11-15 10:57:03 GMT

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Was any new info published about Alby sunsetting hosted wallets?