Bitcoin is an open protocol, so people can use whichever apps they want—and savvy users certainly can.
But a BBLE should have a go-to technology stack to recommend for consumers and merchants to get maximum benefit with minimum hassle. Easier and quicker onboarding makes Bitcoin more approachable to more people, and it can help to form a stronger basis for layering more advanced concepts in the future. Critically, a simpler upfront approach can ease the support burden for community leads.
Furthermore, a thoughtfully-chosen stack can increase the upfront value proposition for consumers and merchants, making it more likely that people actually use it.
- What are the top priorities for your target users? What balance of convenience, custody, privacy, control, and functionality makes sense for them? Which tools and setups provide this balance?
- What functionality is strictly necessary? How can you simplify your recommended stack (and how you describe it to people) as much as possible?
- Will your community run exclusively on Lightning, or will it also accommodate on-chain payments?
- Are you planning to have any on-premises Bitcoin infrastructure, such as a Bitcoin node or Lightning node? Will they serve a functional purpose, or will they be intended for education?
- Are you planning to maintain any funds in community custody, such as multisignature on-chain wallets or community-managed Lightning channels?
- What is your 'activation' process? How will you introduce people to the tools you recommend?
Bitcoin Beach's top priorities regarding technology were convenience for consumers and merchants. After not having a great experience with an on-chain wallet and a custodial Lightning wallet, the team started working with Galoy Inc to pilot what became known as the Bitcoin Beach wallet. Galoy was just starting out and looking for a real-world application of its open-core Bitcoin banking offering, and Bitcoin Beach offered a ready-to-go base of consumers and merchants for usage and feedback.
Over time, Galoy integrated Bitcoin Beach's feedback to offer some notable features in the Bitcoin Beach wallet:
- An easy onboarding experience: a short friendly tutorial to help new users learn about Bitcoin, no need to worry about saving seed words, and no need to worry about Lightning channel management.
- Handles for all users, so that people could simply send money to people (intuitive) instead of having to deal with funny-looking invoices or addresses that change every time (confusing).
- A map showing all the merchants in El Zonte that accepted bitcoin.
- Ability for users to enter amount and push payments directly to merchants without merchants needing to create an invoice.
There are certainly custody and privacy trade-offs of such an approach, but the result (as of the end of 2021) is a small town in El Salvador in which 90% of families have used Bitcoin at least once in the past 6 months, 50% of families use bitcoin on a regular basis, and 50% of businesses accept bitcoin. Savvy users are gradually learning about self-custody and saving more safely for the long-term. Such strong adoption and progress wouldn't have had a chance if people had to deal with traditional wallet setup, or if merchants had to put up with a payment flow that was less convenient.
An 'activation' process could look something like this:
- Suggest person to download a specific wallet app
- Explain bitcoin, satoshis, etc while the app is downloading
- Help the user set up the wallet and send the user a few satoshis to demonstrate
- Suggest trusted resources for updates on community efforts, bitcoin-only education, and price tracking
- Address volatility concerns (e.g. instill a long-term mindset)
- Warn against exchanging bitcoin with strangers and/or trading other coins
- Suggest basic security measures (e.g. phone pin, wallet recoverability)
- Caution against storing large amounts in phone wallet
- Introduce more advanced users to self-custody methods for saving