Next Level Payment Integration with NWC
By building on NWC, Prism is leading the way of creating new payment-based non-custodial business models on top of this open protocol that haven’t been possible before.
Payment experience without limits
NWC is a protocol that allows apps to integrate any bitcoin lightning wallet across devices and platforms. Firewalls, browser certificates, private lightning nodes are not limiting the user experience anymore. NWC completely rewrites the rules of the game and levels the playing field which was previously dominated by closed APIs.
Prism is one of the first companies discovering the potential of this protocol by building a Nostr Zap app and the Discord Zap Bot. But counter to first intuition, Prism never custodies bitcoin and doesn’t even run any bitcoin or lightning infrastructure. They only orchestrate payment messages between wallets thanks to NWC.
Discord Zap Bot
Existing bitcoin tipping bots have one thing in common. They come with an implemented wallet. Users are required to create accounts and deposit money first before they can tip another person. Instead of staying sovereign, the user transfers custody to the bot provider’s wallet. As a consequence, the bot provider risks being labeled a money transmitter service with regulatory requirements in different jurisdictions and therefore the user’s deposited bitcoin is always at risk.
All users have to agree on using the same wallet of the bot provider. NWC completely removes the need to transfer funding into a third-party intermediary wallet. Users are not even required to use the same wallet anymore and can simply connect the one they trust the most. All the payments still settle instantly thanks to NWC and the lightning network.
Try out the Zap Bot in the PlebDev community on Discord or add the Zap Bot to your Discord server. All you need is an NWC enabled wallet such as Alby, Mutiny, Start9, Strike or Umbrel to send and receive tips while chatting with others. No Nostr private key is required at all to connect a wallet and now it's possible to send hundreds of payments with one click.
Nostr Zap App
Splitting payments easily across different recipients is an often requested feature as it allows to implement models for revenue sharing or revenue attribution. Lightning prisms is one of these concepts. But without Nostr, sending multi-party payments are hard to coordinate and execute. It requires figuring out each user’s lightning address, a way to coordinate payout amounts, and someone taking custody of the bitcoin for a period of time to manage the payouts.
With the Nostr Zapp app, they are now incredibly easy. If you want to create a prism on Nostr type $boost into the text of your post on any client (i.e. Damus, Primal, Amethyst, Snort). The first 10 users who repost it will be included in the prism. The prism is posted on @PrismPosts and you can zap it with any client that supports zap splits like Snort or Amethyst to reward the first reposts. The same works for different actions such as comments or likes. You can send up to 100 zaps with one click. This opens up a completely new advertising model for zaps on Nostr and users without large audiences to participate in essentially what is ad revenue sharing as described by Derek Ross.
While this can be done by a trusted party, with NWC, all payments are executed wallet to wallet and without any intermediary.
Next level payment integration with NWC
These apps showcase how NWC facilitates one-click, multi-party transactions and thanks to bitcoin’s lightning network in an instant and inexpensive way. Developers can also use NWC to monetize the payment volume in their apps without the need for a custodian. Two payments can be initiated simultaneously from the sender's wallet. As a consequence, users can effortlessly pay both the recipient and the app with just one click. Prism’s API makes it even easier for developers to implement split payments.
Thus, based on NWC developers can now set a revenue share based on the payment volume through their app without ever custodying funds from users - and it works across platforms and any NWC enabled wallet.
If you are an app or wallet developer join the Discord channel to learn more about next level payment integration with NWC or try out one of these apps listed here.