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GetAlby
I'm pretty certain of this now and but it appears that the Alby Lightning software which has "Bitcoin without boundaries" as it's tag line is geo-blocking Israel because some of their people hate Israel.
If you try to log in from Israel (but not from anywhere else I've tried via VPNs) you get the following friendly screen:
Behind the scenes they're returning a 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons error
Tuesday Morning update
I drafted most of this post on Friday 22nd waiting for answers. I sent my first support request having noticed this on Tuesday 19th.
The situation as of Tuesday 26th November is that, following direct communications with GetAlby after I posted publicly on the Podcasting 2.0 Mastadon site and they found my direct support email questions from a few days ago, the geo block seemed to have been lifted.
However I'm checking again now and the message is back trying to re-authenticate.
{ "message": "Service unavailable in your region. Refer to GitHub to setup your own system. If you lost access or if you have questions/concerns contact [email protected]", "error": true, "code": 451 }
After specifically saying I would be publishing this publicly I asked them the following questions, but these have not be answered at time of publishing this.
Is Alby officially geo blocking Israel deliberately?
If so when did you officially start this policy?
What is the reason for the block?
Do you block any other countries or regions and for what reasons are they blocked?
Have you made any public announcement or given reasons publicly?
Alby accounts to Alby Hub
When Alby first started they gave users a non-custodial wallet (i.e. they held sats on your behalf). But they have phased this system out in favour of one where you have to run your own node and link it to their back end or you can pay them some large amount and they will give you a virtual node of your own.
In order to keep using Alby with the various podcasting 2.0 apps I did this transfer and used my own secondary Lightning node (I have a primary one for @v4vapp and a secondary I use for testing).
But, and this is a huge problem because of the very poor architecture of Lightning as I've discussed for years, for a lot of this to function you need to rely on Alby's infrastructure. For example, in order for me to have a Lightning Address [email protected] I need their servers to answer with my Lightning Node's address.
So in order for this to work, even though I'm running their software on my own Lightning node, part of the authentication process for managing this bounces through their servers.
What Legal Reasons?
As far as I know there are no regulatory legal issues where I live with using my own Lighting node. If I VPN into the USA (one of the most problematic jurisdictions for Lightning and the main reason Alby stopped offering their non-custodial wallet) I can log in to the account.
But in Israel it really appears to be geoblocked.
Even using a VPN it's actually not working right now for logging in via my Lightning node, possibly because while I can divert my browser traffic through a VPN, I'm not sure how to put the entire Lightning node behind a VPN without breaking things.
Hate Israel, censor Israel
Unfortunately, right now, it does appear the reason for this is probably hatred of Israel. I can see from the social media posts of at least one of the primary developers for the project that there isn't a lie about Israel and Jews which he hasn't swallowed in whole, hook, line and sinker. It's a pity that otherwise news and media skeptical BTC type people will believe anything if it confirms a deeply held prejudice like hatred or deep jealousy of Jews.
Lightning is crippled
And this is why Lightning is a crippled system which is the antithesis of open Bitcoin. So much of it relies on centralised systems (like the entire Lightning Address system) that it will be captured. This is also necessary if I want to give a Podcasting 2.0 listening app permission to send sats on my behalf to a podcaster via an API call in the background.
The only reason they could consider using Lighting in El Salvador is that by centralising most of the population on the El Chivo wallet software, that app becomes a defacto Central Bank Digital Currency. The fact that it is denominated in Bitcoin sats is just an annoyance and a principle reason that the vast majority of El Salvadorians have ignored it.
But if the people capturing control take arbitrary decisions to block an entire country like Israel how is this acceptable in the Bitcoin world? What happened to "censorship resistance" and liberty? Alby doesn't seem to believe in either of these ideals.
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Posted Using InLeo Alpha
The same happens to all people in Cuba and not just for Alby! Many crypto projects claim to have no boundaries but must follow US rules.
It is time to log into Nostr with V4V
I did some support of Nostr but they're so unfriendly I stopped.
But doesnt Nostr also rely on the same Lightning Infrastructure? Wouldnt improve the issue @brianoflondon described, will it?
The infrastructure is not the issue. Is the company.
Ok so switching Alby against a different one could solve the issue ?
Hey I still have that money from WAY back in the day when I used V4V...
It's on GetAlby and they even say it no longer has support on the current version.
Any advice on how to proceed?
It's "only" 100k sats but still.
I've been ignoring it and these emails.
If you can still log in to your GetAlby account you SHOULD be able to transfer the sats over to @v4vapp
You can probably use
[email protected]as a lightning address or you go into the Sales tab on my app, generate an invoice for the correct amount of sats and copy paste that in to Alby.If you have any problems, contact support and don't mention me or Israel 🤣
I'm getting used to this kind of reveal happening where a centralized structure, a "benevolent dictator" you can say, suddenly decides to not be so benevolent for some reason. I actually am grateful they are doing this so I can avoid lightning in the future.
My understanding of the lightning network is that it caches transactions to submit to the bitcoin blockchain periodically. Is there any way for V4V to do this instead of relying on lightning to do bitcoin transactions?
I haven't read your critiques of their method. Is it possible to compete by creating a better one? Or, is V4V already that?
Lighting is much bigger than that, can't go into it in a comment I've written reams about it.
The best that can be said of Lighting is that VC will spend a ton of money capturing it and gateway like @v4vapp will sneakily use their investment to interface through.
Really sad to hear if that is really the case. What about the Liquid Network? Have you looked into that Bitcoins L2, would that change the situation? Or a different „Host“ than Alby?
I can't even be bothered with Liquid: as far as I can see the tech stack is a side chain which is inferior to Hive in every reasonable way.
I meant Liquid as an alternative to Alby/classic Lightning. Hive of course is a different breed.
The only reason I'm still using Lightning is because a significant VC investment has gone into pushing it out to actual retail users at the end of long, expensive and centralised systems. As far as I can see Liquid hasn't had that.
Maybe they try to stay away from VC? I know that Samson Mow and Adam Back are working there and the last is an old Cypherpunk that probably likes to stay independent. 🤷🏼♂️
I don't want VC but if I can piggyback on and use the stuff they pay for.... that's different!
Got that. Just thought it might be an alternative. Maybe not now. 👍🏻
I'm not a supporter of the government, but punishing all Israelis for its actions with an arbitrary digital roadblock is still wrong, especially in the realm of cryptocurrency where the goal is to circumvent artificial borders.
Drat, i was getting talked into getting Alby to get onto nostr, and join in the chats there.
But, when i look into people who actually know anything, this stuff above comes up.
Nostr is a messy code base, and their sharing/distributing posts is not reliable to say the least.
And, if Alby requires you to run your own node, then why use them at all?
Drat, i wanted to start tipping satoshis.
Maybe i am spoiled by HIVE?
I think Nostr is a complete mess. They fundamentally don't have the decentralised centralised storage and authentication which Hive gives us so its just messed up.
Scary that people throw out the entire idea behind btc just because of politics. They are the same as the people currently running out monetary system when they are suppose to be the opposite.
It is very wrong when things were moved towards freedom, still all people should have the same right to freedom and no one's transactions should be viewed in this way. Can do in this world.
Really sad and unfortunate. I hope we can move past Lightning entirely soon so that we have real uncensorable transactions.
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