Newsletter

Alby Buzz: NPM fund and big Alby update

• 3 min read
Alby Buzz: NPM fund and big Alby update

Hello Alby Community!

Welcome to the 18th edition of Alby Buzz, where you find out about everything new at Alby, the lightning app ecosystem, and are the first to learn about what's coming next.

  • Joltz hints the launch of a Taproot Assets wallet in just a few weeks.
  • Binance now supports deposits and withdrawals of bitcoin over the lightning network.
  • Phoenix introduced splicing which allows them to maintain only a single channel with lower fees for users.
  • LN Markets hits an all-time high of $50 million monthly trading volume in June.
  • LN Capital just released version 1.0 of Torq with a focus on lightning node management workflows and automation.
  • Mutiny, a self custodial lightning wallet for the browser is now in beta.
  • Pocket Bitcoin launched a test phase of their lightning top up service.
  • The Validating Lightning Signer is available in beta allowing the segregation of the signing component from the rest of the node.
  • The Human Rights Foundation announces a 20 BTC bounties for bitcoin development. Our team member, Jakub, is helping to port the Bitcoin UI Kit to the open-source Penpot project from its current Figma file format.

Meet new Nostr apps:

  • Zapgoals a zap fundraisers for bitcoin donations for your goals launched.
  • ZapplePay was published to enable zap posts simply by commenting an emoji using Nostr Wallet Connect.
  • Stemstr is now live for music artists to connect, collaborate and share amazing music. Tune in.
  • 0xchat is a new privacy focused chat app built on the Nostr protocol.
  • atomstr is a RSS/Atom gateway to Nostr is live. It generates Nostr profiles for each RSS feed and posts new entries to given Nostr relay(s). Users can subscribe to these feeds by connecting to the relay.

Open-source money for open-source code

Developers are able to receive funding for npm packages by adding a funding property to their code packages. In an attempt to support the open source community PkgZap allows developers to earn and contribute back by boosting all code dependencies at once thanks to bitcoin as programmable money.

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Accelerating Podcasting 2.0 with LetsCast.fm

Alby is pleased to announce a new integration with LetsCast.fm; a German podcasting platform for hosting, distribution, audience statistics, monetization and other tools podcasters need to grow their podcasts. Alby is helping to bring LetsCast.fm into the world of Value 4 Value (V4V) by enabling bitcoin payment streaming via bitcoin.

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Whats new in Alby

v3, Spiral Aurora over Icelandic Divide has arrived in the Alby Browser Extension.
This release greatly improves key management and the login to your Alby Account with a dedicated account connector. Major changes include:

  • Introduction of a Master key 🗝️
    As a user, you now have a Master key from which you are able to derive your private keys for Nostr, on-chain bitcoin, Lightning login (LNURL-auth) and who knows which ecosystem is next.... This also includes a recovery phrase which makes backups a lot easier.
  • Improvements of the Alby Account connector 🐝
    The new Alby Account connector allows you to personalize the browser extension by showing your own lightning address, your avatar from your personal Alby page and much more in the future.
  • Login with lightning changes ⚠️
    With the update of the Alby Account connector we can now tie the login with lightning via LNURL-auth to a private key as intended by the spec. However, once you add back or reconnect your Alby Account to the browser extension it won't result in the same account on 3rd party apps if you login with lightning. Never mind, this guide about how to migrate the login into 3rd party apps to the new Alby Account connector has you covered.

That's it from the hive this month. For more, visit our website and follow Alby on Twitter and Nostr*. We love your feedback! Big or small, feature requests or bug reports, we read them all! Please visit the feedback board to help us out.

*Our Nostr pubkey: npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm