Phoenixd Dashboard with Miguel

Hello, and welcome back to Freedom Tech Friday, a weekly live and interactive show hosted on the Ungovernable Misfits, Ethnost, the YouTube Rumble, and Twitch feeds. We go live for one hour every Friday at 9AM eastern or 2PM UK time, but you can also catch up later on the podcast feed.

On Freedom Tech Friday, we like to cover the latest news and trends for anything relating to Freedom Technologies. That could be anything from Bitcoin or Monero, encrypted messengers, privacy tools, and everything in between.

Essentially, if there's a news item tool or topic that can help you take back some control in today's digital Panopticon, then we wanna talk about it. My name is Q and A, and I'm head of experience at Foundation where we build Bitcoin focused sovereignty tools.

As always, I am joined by my good friend Max, the head honcho at the Ungovernable Empire, and Seth who is COO over at CakeWallet. This is a live and interactive show and you can help steer the conversation by commenting live, pre submitting your questions or topics on socials,

boosting the show via podcast two point o apps, sending in tips, or just sharing the show with your friends. Top support from the last show with Jordan and Max Tannehill talking all things bit 47 comes from Anon who sent 7,936 sats and said, ape here, presumably

ape mythrand here. So you're very anon. I'm not sure what went on there. Anyway, he said, I'm trying to escape the fountain walled garden. What do you need to be able to boost a podcast using your n pub and your own l n wallet?

Is there any way to avoid the fountain fees? I can post via the fountain website using external wallet, but you still get hit with the 2% fees. Help a brother out during the bear market. Off the top of my head, I am not sure. I'd love to get back to you on that one, Ape. But

thank you for your support. And if you don't get a response in a couple of days, please badger me on Nostril, and I'll do some research. There's there's gotta be a way around it. I know He also he mentioned pay NIMs as well, which I said I'll I'll send him. There we go. So we we owe you both both of us owe you, Ape. And,

yeah, I'm sure there's a way around it. I'm I'm I'm betting that Chad Farrow will have an answer to that one. But anyway, without further ado, Max, Seth, we do have a guest, so I'm gonna bring him on in a second. But for now, how are you both doing?

Very good, mate. I'm excited for today. I use Phoenix on my phone pretty heavily and not yet use Phoenix d, so excited to learn more. Yeah. Likewise. I'm I'm pumped to do this.

I've I've been a longtime user of PhoenixD, not super heavily, but it's something that I think fills a niche that we didn't really have in the the Lightning space. So I'm excited to learn more about how people can use it more easily.

I kinda did it on the server side and command line, but I know that's a little too little too scary for most people. So I'm looking forward to that. And I'm also just breathing a sigh of relief because our biggest release in a very long time is finally going out today. So I can I can get some sleep Congrats?

Nice. Yeah. Long time coming and very highly anticipated. So excited to see that in the wild. Nice work. Alright. Interest of time, we do have a hard stop. So today, we have a guest on the show, which I always enjoy doing. We are joined by Miguel Medeiros.

And Miguel's gonna tell me whether or not I butchered that in a second.

He's a Brazilian Bitcoin developer who's been building open source tools for Bitcoiners for a number of years now. Some of you may be familiar with him from his work over at Mempool or from Synonym where he's been working, I believe, on the PUBKey protocol, but we're gonna learn some more about that in a second.

But but today, we're talking about something he's been building and something that Max and I have been talking about for a couple of months now on the Bitcoin brief that I think a lot of the Fintech Friday ones deserve to know about, and that is the Phoenix d dashboard.

We're gonna dive in in a second. But first off, Miguel, welcome to the show, mate. Before we get into the the nitty gritty about it, how are you how are you doing? And maybe just give us a bit of a a bit about yourself and a bit of your background.

Yeah. I'm doing good. Doing good. Nice to meet you guys. It's a pleasure to be here. So, yes, I'm I've been working for with peer to peer technology since, like, four years ago since I entered Synonym.

And, yes, we're doing, something called we we invented the technology called PICAR, public key addressable resource records, that on top of this, we build, the PUBKey stack. So it's really, really cool.

It's we are using the BitTorrent network, so that's actually really, really nice. And before that, I was I was, helping mempool dot space. You probably know this this project. So I was helping Wiz and Simon to build everything regarding exploring and stuff like that. So it was really cool there too.

And on my vacation, I took time to build something for me. And what I've built was PhoenixD dashboard because I don't know if this is, like, a good podcast, but I'm, like, a kind of a lightning hater.

This would be, like, surprise for you guys, but I don't like lightning, but this is the thing that we have. Right? So I've already tried everything that you can imagine. I started doing everything by hand, like installing everything, CLI everything,

like, trying to help with my friends here at home. I can try to figure out how to work at the beginning of, like, 2018, And, like, nothing works. Like, everything was test set. They're like, it was horrible. The UX was horrible.

And at the beginning, you have to manage all the liquidity, open all the channels, like, do all the transactions by hand and everything like that. Right? And then later, came IKEA softwares to, like, l and d and stuff like that came with

UI, cool UI. They have, like, has to bleeds, and they have, like after they came, like, umbrella stuff. So you can kind of, like, self host it with Lightning Lightning channels for yourself. But even then,

it's a bad UX. Right? So I had, like, a a journey to find out, what was the best UX for my own projects, for my own things that I was using Lightning, and I stumbled into Phenix d. And for me, that was like, okay. This is the way to go. This is the perfect u UX to go and

and can kind of, like, have, like, a workaround for everything that Lightning sucks. And yeah. So that was, like, my journey to get into this project. Pretty much, like, stumbling to Lightning and figure out that Lightning sucks a lot and try to get the best UX of it.

And, yeah, and then suddenly to Phoenix e. And and to be honest, like, the guys from ASIC, like, they are the wizards. They are the best of what we have today in Lightning. So, yeah, they figure out how to do splicing and stuff like that. So now it's perfect.

It's really hard it's really easy to connect Lightning with your with your project. So Yeah. Thanks for that. I I I really wanna just dive in a little bit more to that to kind of set the scene as to why Phoenix d itself was such a game changer.

What were the the kind of hurdles and stuff that you were coming up against when you were saying, you know, you summarized it quite eloquently there by saying that lightning sucks and, you know, you're in good company here. We all we all we've all felt those same pain points.

But maybe let's let's just paint a bit more of a of a, you know, clearer picture for people, you know, what were you hit coming up against and how'd PhoenixD solve that for you?

Yeah. So first of all, like, in order to receive, you need to open a channel. Like, you need to spend on chain, and then you need to spend on Lightning so you can have inbound liquidity or outbound liquidity to receive money.

And what a horrible UX this is. Like, this is horrible. Like right? You need to deposit it, and then you need deposit, and then you need to spend it, and then you're not to receive. What what do you have? Like, doesn't make any sense. Right?

And and this is a horrible UX. And and imagine, like, if you receive that much money and you fulfill all your or inbound liquidity and you need to open more channels, like, it's another pain. Like and if you have, like, multiple channels, you need to balance those. It's So another pain. Like so

but, like, at the end, like, you need to be, like, a full time, like, watching this stuff. Like, even if with, like, automatic

tools that people are doing, like and and connecting with Telegram, like, the auto balancing stuff. Like, even though, like, you'd and and at the end, you're you're you're spending fees too. Right? You you need to manage liquidity, manage fees, and and and, like, keep the connectivity there, like, backups.

It's it's a burden. It's like a full time job, to be honest. And that's why people are trying to find out, like, easy ways to manage liquidity, and Finix e was, like, a solution to that. Kind of a self custodial solution. Right?

So it was kind of the first one that kind of, like, hopped into my mind because it's different from any anything else that we had before. So that's that's why I think that the issues is, like, managing your your node, your Lightning node. It's not, like, like, an easy thing to do.

That's why the hurt hurdles of, like, running a Lightning company or something like that. Yeah. You mentioned the the Async guys earlier being Lightning wizards. I think there's there's just, like, so much going on to what they've built with Phoenix Wallet, and that's PhoenixD, because it is it's pretty similar to

it basically is a serverized version of Phoenix Wallet. But, yeah, they're, like their ability to build a Lightning experience that is Lightning native, it's not a kind of an abstraction like you would think of, like,

the the liquid custodial approach where you're just swapping into Lightning when you wanna spend or the Spark and Arc approaches where you're using a state chain or a side chain and then swapping into Lightning when you wanna spend, but Phoenix is actual Lightning channels on chain, and yet it feels

almost perfect. There's definitely still some pain points with it, that just come with how Lightning works, but it feels almost perfect. And it's a team that I feel like almost no one has, like, met or seen. They don't they don't sponsor events. They don't come out.

Like, they just they just build incredible stuff behind the scenes and ship it, and have been doing that for a really long time.

They they they even tweak something. They just, like, chill pill. They're just building, building, building, and then just, oh, hey. You guys have built we built something. And then and that actually was like I remember when when they tweeted about Phoenix Tea, I was, like, shocked. I was like, what the fuck?

This is exactly what I wanted. Because I was playing with third parties. Right? I was playing with Alan Pay, and then Alan bids my own things. And and well, there was a lot a lot of, like, coin OS. Like, they have, like, their own APIs that you can do it.

And I remember that when they put it up that tweet and they put up the website, I've I I was, what? This is exactly the solution that I needed. And it was like, like, said, like, it's the back end for 10xD.

So it's just like a terminal CLI. You're gonna see, like, nothing fancy. But it was exactly that I wanted. Like, they have, like, auto liquidity. Like, you manage everything for me. Like, it just, like, easy way to build it. And and and Seth was, like, a piece, was one of the piece of the Phenixe dashboard because he made the the

the container image, that I've used in the beginning. And now, like, Asinka has, like, incorporated the the the image there, so thanks for that stuff. And and, yeah, like, now it's, like, super easy to to just, like, install and start using PhenixD.

And and those guys, they are be slight. So as soon as they they tweet that and they don't tweet that much. So I they tweet that. I was, like, reading the documentation, and they do, like, something that I call, like, Phenix.

I don't know if you can share my screen now. I don't know if it's too early, but I can show everything that I'm I'm I'm saying. Yeah. So just before you do that, just to kinda set the scene, so Phoenix d is, like, a bit like lightning sorry. Excuse me. Phoenix d is a little bit like Phoenix on on the mobile where it's like

server side lightning on easy mode where everything's kind of automatically managed for you with all of the, you know, the new features that you would get with with the Phoenix mobile application, which I'm I'm sure we're all huge fans of. I know I know that I am.

But clearly, the fact that it was a CLI tool or that it is a CLI tool kind of limits how many people are willing to kind of dive into that. So was that the impetus for you to, you know, wanna build a UI layer around that? Was it to come out to more people? And I'm just kinda curious to to hear what what what was the main, you know,

impetus for us to build a dashboard? That was the main that was the main pain for me because, like, every time that I need to go and see my balance of my stuff and and and move things, like balance ins,

I had to go to the terminal. I remember all the API again. I said, oh, fuck. I don't even remember it, and I need to go there. And I said, oh my god. One day, will build, like, a dashboard for this. One day, I'll build it. One day, I'll build it. And then I I keep that in my mind, and then the day came, and I say, hey. That's the rate.

And then I did it. So, yeah, that that was my it was like I was doing things for me. So, like sorry, guys. I didn't thought about our end users. It was just I was the user. So and then I viewed it, and it was, oh, that that's really cool. And then I did it open source, and then people, like,

shared on Twitter, and then people started using it because, like, it's useful. And then and then after I did it, I realized there was, like, there was two other attempts to do, like, something kind of kind of like that, but they are not, like, the as good as mine. So I think mine got more popular.

Nice. Honestly, a lot of times, the best stuff comes from those situations where you're just like, I need this for me. This fills the gap that I have. I'm gonna build this. And then the beauty of open source pairs with that, where you have built something that is just a good fit for you.

But instead of just keeping it behind closed doors and just for yourself,

you share it out to the world, and and so much good stuff comes like that. I mean, pretty much everything I've done has initially been something where I need it, but it's awesome that I can easily share that with the world. CakeWalt started as something that Vic wanted.

Like, it's it's really common, I think, for the most fantastic projects to be just, yeah, created by Mhmm. Someone for something they need and solving that goal, and then it find it turns out that a lot of people have shared needs.

Yeah. Definitely. Alright, Miguel. Let's let let's leverage the the power of video here. If you wanna take over the screen share and give us, like, the full walk through,

as much as you can show us, we've got plenty of time here to go from onboarding to all of the cool features just like, you know, show your wares. I'm I'm excited to see this live. Yeah. So I I think I've already shared here on your screen.

We're not seeing it just yet. Let me try it again. It might be that I missed the notification. Okay. There we go. Yep. Okay. It's on its way. There we go. Okay. So this is the phoenix t dash that's like phoenix t put up a tweet that points out to this website,

and then, like, my first impression was, like, reading this. I said, okay. Now I have, like, an HTTP endpoints. I have WebSockets. I have everything. Everything's there. So and then the the next thing that I did was, like, click on get started and download the thing and and and use the CLI to work with.

So that's what we're saying. Like, we don't have, like, a a user interface, like, one. But we have an API, and the API could do anything, like, invoices, like, invoice that you paid once, invoice that you reused invoice, like both 12 and both 11.

You can do pay to on chain. Otherwise, you can swap between Lightning and on chain if you want to. You can pay to Lightning addresses. You can you can have, like, lots of stuff, even real time notifications. So that was what I saw when they made the published tweet.

And I said, oh my god. Okay. Let's do something, like, to use on my own project. So I call it Phoenix e Phoenix server JS. And it's just a library that you imported. So that was the first like, I was just studying. While I was reading the, you know, documentation, I did this. So this was my first,

let's say, project on top of this. I renamed it to Phoenix JS later. But it's super simple. Like, you can see here, like, just, like, associate, like, a Phoenix, and you you you do do phoenix dot, and you can see all the the APIs endpoints, like, easily to to consume

on your code. Right? So you can integrate easily with this package. And then later, like I said, I said, okay. Like, one day, I'm gonna do a dashboard, and then I did the dashboard. So this is the Phoenix c dashboard, slash Phoenix dashboard,

And this is a cool cool dashboard that you can have. Like, you have lots of features that I'm gonna need to to go through through all of them. But, yeah, like, this is the this is the thing that I did to consume that API.

So let's go through to the Phoenix dash dashboard. This is the wizard that you started, but let's go to the code first. So I have my code here.

Okay. I think you can see it. Right? Yeah. Yep. We can. Yep. So the the first thing that you're gonna do is do docker compose upbuilt. Right? I've already have it running here. So you're gonna have, like, a docker running with this instance here. You're gonna have, like, a phoenix c.

Let me open the logs here. So you're gonna have, like, your back end that I did for for duplication. For the dashboard, you have the front end of your Phoenix e, and you have, like, a database.

I have full screen here. So you're gonna run Docker Compose up minus e minus minus build, and you're gonna run, and it's going to run up this this Docker Compose here.

So as soon as you run the Docker Compose, you're gonna go to local host 3,000, and it's going to go through the setup page. It's going to redirect this page because you don't have you have to go through a wizard setup to to do the first time, so you can select your language.

I think I've already did this one. Yeah. I've already did this one. Let's go through let's reset it again. I can reset it. Just keep everything that I did here so so I don't lose anything.

It's resetting the configurations and going to the visit again. I'm just, like, resetting stuff that I did because this I it's already a note that I've run for for my own things. So you just select your language.

You do next, and then you just, like, do a password here that you want. And then you can have, like, a minimal, full, or a custom one. Let's do the full one, but you can let's do the custom one. You can choose between themes.

You can choose between backgrounds because why not? Right? Sure. And you can Just before you move forward, Miguel, what's the difference between the the different setup types? Like, why why would I choose one over the other?

Yeah. It's because within the dashboard, I I added more stuff. So I added, like, a theme. You can you can you can select the theming. You can select your language. So there's, like, a a full wizard. There's nothing fancy there. There's only one thing at the end. Let let's go to the custom one. So let's next, you can choose a theme.

You can choose a background. You can choose if you want to use, PhoenixD locally, otherwise, you're gonna use the PhoenixD that I bootstrapped here,

or you're gonna use this external one because you can connect this dashboard. You can just run the dashboard in the Docker and point to an existing one. Right? So that's really cool. Let's use the Docker one right now. And you can also have, like, network services because, imagine that you want to,

access this through when you were traveling and you have, like, the Tailscale in your in your phone,

but you but the the the Phoenix d is running in your server. So you can run Tailscale in your phone and and and run it here, connect it here. You can both connect while you're traveling. So that's really cool. You can open ports to the Internet. So if you have a domain, you can use a call for the domain to open a port to a domain.

So you can access a domain and get access to the Finitec dashboard. And you can use, like, a store too. So you can, enable all of them if you want to. And I made like, at the end, I'm gonna talk about the apps. Okay? I'm not gonna put the apps now. But, yeah, you can you can run, a custom, installation.

So the next thing you're gonna complete here, it will run the Dockers here. It will run all the Dockers, and start the the dashboard for you. Remember, this was already, like, a dashboard that I'm using, so there is a, like, a balance here.

When you're gonna when you start, like at first, you don't have anything. You don't have any any capacity, any any anything here. Right? You you still need to open a channel. So everything will be, like, seared here, and you're gonna but you're gonna be able to receive money. Right? Because what Phoenix, Phoenix d, does is

you first receive credits. And as soon as you have the amount of money to pay for the opening fees, and Phoenix d fee fees,

you you open automatically, and then everything goes to your channel. So in in this example here, I've already have a channel here. So if I click on my channel, already have a channel here. So you can see that I'm playing with this.

So, yeah, so this is the first impression that you have when you install it. Right? So install it, and you have, like, a, let's change to let's change this to

English. Okay. So you have an overview here. Oh, it's a little bit buggy. It's forcing me to Portuguese. Okay. But this is, the overview. And in the overview, you're gonna see that I've I've added more stuff here. So you have, like, an analytics page so you can check everything what happens within the your your transactions

and everything that run your node. You have context because why not? Right? I added context there. And with context, I I added recurring payments. So you can actually keep sending money, through context. So let let's let's try this one. That this one's really cool. So I added I added my bot here,

and and I added, like, a lightning address for for my bot. They just to add a a context, just any anything here like a bot, and you can add anything. You can add, like, a lightning address. You can add the directly node or above 12. Right? So you can you pay. So let's create, like, a let's say, like, $10.10 Satoshis per minute,

and let's schedule it. So you can see, like, in in recurring payment, it's already there. And every minute, we'll we'll spend, like, ten seconds to to this lightning address. So you can add context. You can pay, like, recurring payments.

It's good for you guys that that have, like, podcasts. You can people can do this and and keep paying for you if they want to. And and you can see, like, you can receive one time or reusable one.

You can send, like, one time or reusable one to send to Allen address or to swap to on chain on chain two. This everything that you can see in the HTTP endpoints, you can see it here too, but with the cool UI. Right? So if you want to, like, for example, receive, like, a 100 sets, it's already there. K. Let's let's pay this with my

let's pay this with my Albie. So so you can see here, I just received it. It had, like, cool animations too. So yeah. And you can see, like, with both both 11 or both 12, you can, like, have, like, a reusable, address too.

And you can have, like, a list of payments, and you can click and see, like, what was going on with that payment. You can even add add category or notes to the payment so you can see, oh, this was, like, I pay for a coffee, whatever.

What else you have? Like, channels. You can see you can close channels. You can see them and pull, what is the transaction regarding the channel. You have also tools. So here you can oh, see? I've already paid with my recurring payment there.

So here, I have tools to decode stuff. I can decode a boat eleven or a boat twelve invoice, and I also, could infer fees. So I can get when I get, like, more liquidity or something, I can I can know how much it's going to cost me with that fees?

I also have l n URL. This is also part of of, Phoenix, API.

And, yeah, pretty much, this is this is fixed APIs. Right? And just plus contacts and recurring payment on on top of it. And I also did analytics too. So here's, like, just, like, a cool dashboard that you can see. This this activity heat map is really cool. Like, it's like GitHub

commits, but for payments, they can hover and see, okay, how many payments I did here, how many payments I received. It really cool. And you can see, like, how much fees you pay, how are we paying. Right?

And, yeah, this is, just analytic stuff. And to close it up, like, all the features, you can see, like, note stuff. And if you're text heavy and you want to see logs, you can actually see logs from your from your

Docker Compose, and you can that's a cool it's really cool that you can access terminal there. So, actually, I'm I'm going through SSH here, and and and I'm inside of the the container. So you can if you want to, you can you can hop in here and and this is Linux. Right? You can go go in there.

And you have settings. Settings page, you can you can set up, like, your lock lock background. You can set set, like, passwords. You can set up here, like, tail scale configuration, stuff like that.

Here, you can add more notes. Right? You can add external notes. So I added my my own website here. For so, for example, if I want to change this dashboard and point to my website, I just click here, and it will point to my website, my statistic, everything there. So you can have, like, multiple ones or the auto generated ones. Right?

But that's really cool. And display, you can also have, like, multiple currencies. You can see, like, the your balance in in doll in dollars, in euros, and or Bitcoins. And if you're choosing Bitcoin, you can hop between the showing on on sets or or Bitcoins in bit one seven seven.

And you can themes, and you can also change animations. Like, I have thunder, fireworks, and stuff like that. I like confetti better. You can turn on and off sounds. So that was, like, just getting crazy with this. Right? But,

and you can have, like, wallet backups and, yeah, everything else. It's just just everything here. And and that that saying that, I I kind of complete all the features that I want for the dashboard. I don't want to put anything more here because I think it's already there. It's it's finished.

It's really it's really nice. Did you have a did you have a background in UX UI? I think Jordan asked this as well in in the boost and the messages. But as a general rule, Bitcoin stuff is pretty horrible UX and horrible UI. This is really, really clean.

You mentioned before, specifically with Lightning, like, it's a bit of a pain in the ass. I've had troubles with it, I mean, since the beginning of Lightning, pissing around and having problems. And I look at something like this. I'm gonna use feedings on my on my phone. It just works. It's brilliant.

Look at something like this, and it just is worlds apart from what we normally see. So is it something you've done for a long time, or have you just got some skills naturally? So my background is, like, I'm I'm kind of old guy.

I'm completely 40, and I'm and I've been and since I developed it since I was a kid. So I've kind of had the birth of Internet, and I've worked for so much in the payment,

like, doing ecommerce stuff and and and dealing with payments and and stuff like that. And also advertising agencies mostly here in Brazil, but the major ones, I've I've worked for as a freelancer for them for so long that I've kind of I've made so many websites in my life.

So and I know what is good and what's bad just by having a good taste of it. I think so. And because I did it a lot, I've sought so many designs, and that's what I do. So I think they and the other thing that I have that I feel like with AI, it's better now. It's kind of a more generalistic.

I've I've started my career in the back end. Actually, kind of a DBA. I started with the DBA role,

and then I've went myself up to the web and starting with the back end and then going to the front end and DevOps. And so now I've kind of built myself like a generalist. So that's why I can do, like, everything from back end to front end DevOps and everything.

And I feel, like, lucky that now I have AI to fulfill the gaps that I don't don't know. So I feel like every every it's like especially Sky, there's super nady in one just one thing. They they oh my god. They they don't they don't get, like, the fully grasp of what you can do if you're a generalist like me.

So Mhmm. Yeah. It feels like much because I did it alone, but I have, like, a solid background on multiple things, so that's why. But UX wise, that's a burden burden with in the develop in the Bitcoin world because I feel like we only have back ends.

So far, it's like, good UX guy. You know? Yeah. And then and then the the sort of feedback for the the retards like me has always been like, oh, just learn it. Just use it. And it's like, okay. I mean, that's fine. But command line stuff and things like that for people who aren't technical,

they just don't pick it up and you don't use it. Whereas something like this is beautiful. Like, I I would jump straight into this and work my way around, and even someone like me would be able to use this. So, yeah, congrats. It's it's really, really nice.

Yeah. I did my best effort. Like I said, like, it was for myself. Right? I did it for me. So but at the end, I was, like, just posting on Twitter.

And then oh, thanks to Vilela and Otto. That that was the guy that I'm here for them, to be honest. They they they forced me to be here because I hate going to I'm more like a backstage guy, and I hate, like, to be, like, podcast and stuff like that. So pardon me if the things are boring here.

But, like No. No. That's right. My I always did for myself.

And as soon as I keep posting the updates, people are like, hey. Can you do this? Can you do that? Oh, yes. For sure. Like, this is on my to do list, And then it was most of the things that were on my to do list, what I didn't say I said, I'm just doing for myself. I'm not glad you would care about this. And then people ask for it.

Okay. Oh, that makes sense. So it's I was just adding more stuff. And then people for the the guys from Umbrella, Start9, and there was another

BTC based server. They liked the project, and they they they tweeted about it, and they want to integrate with their stuff. So that's really cool. Like, this is, like, the thing that I did for myself and maybe to help others. It's super cool.

Yeah. I think it's absolutely excellent. The the UI really, really speaks to me. It's I think it's beautiful to look at. So, you know, really well done on that. Hats off. I think it it looks fantastic.

I'm glad you mentioned the different node packages because you kicked off your your demo there with running

Docker and things like that, which might seem quite trivial to somebody like yourself. But you may have already lost some people being like, well, hang on. What the hell is this Docker thing? Like, if somebody wants to get started with feet with the dashboard today, is Docker

the easiest way to do so? Or is there is it already one point click on start nine and Umbrella? Like, what's the status of all that? Yeah. So fuck. I hated this because, like, people the first thing that they ask, okay. Can I just one click install it?

I said, no. No. You can. You just you need to run Docker, and then just Docker compose up minus d. Like, it's not it's not that hard, guys. Come on. Like, just do it. But people are like, oh, no. I wanted to do this. And and then what I did was make a Tauri app on top of it that just emulates what I did

and runs everything locally, but it's not that stable yet. That was, like, me trying to figure out how to do this. So if you go to releases here, you can check out I think it was the the latest one. You can check you can check check out the assets here.

I don't know if there's yeah. I need to I need to figure out where it is. But, like, you can I'm exporting, to to Mac OS and Linux. You can try to install it, but I I didn't sign it. So in order to to to run the the thing on the Mac, you need to run things on the terminal too. So, like,

nowadays, yes. Only only, it's dockerized. So yes. But, my plan was, okay. Now I have, like, I have, like, our users. Right? TechSub users.

And maybe the next phase would be, like, integrate with something that that normally use, like Umbrella or Site nine or whatever. And they just, like, one click install. And that would that was my plan. So they don't even need to know what Docker is. Right?

But, But, yeah, but currently, we don't have it. I'm sorry, guys.

Nice. I'm gonna throw a listener question at you. I know Seth has quickly answered it in the chat, but it'd be good for you to get your thoughts on it and for people listening on the on the podcast stream as well afterwards.

Vibrant on on Twitter has asked, with phoenix d, what happens when someone pays your invoice that's larger than your current inbound, meaning channel capacity? He said, I know phoenix increases your channel size by splicing, but is there a window where you could be rugged, or is there some protections there?

Good to know. Never tried this one, Vibrant. But yeah. But probably there's they have, like, safeguards for these edge cases. But from my understanding, it happens as pricing, and you just, like, get the get the involved minus the fees, and you get it.

But I never tried, to be honest. So I don't Yes. I I think so. By the way, if you use this, Phoenix dashboard, please use it carefully. This is what I did for myself. If you lose money, it's only it's only you.

So, use it carefully, please. It's, like, not production ready for, like, big stuff. Use for, like, just to play with because it has access to your funds. So take carefully. Just don't open everything, like, to to or something like that. Just go slow.

But give it a shot because it's really, really nice. But, yeah, to be honest, I don't know. I know that, you start with zero,

and then when you have the amount of, like, to to be able to open the channel, it already opened for you. And if you need more inbound liquidity, it already supplies for you and give you more liquidity. It doesn't matter if you don't have the the funds yet. It automatically opens for you. But, of course, it deducts the fees. Right?

And and the only thing that I need to, that I think but I think we are in the in the in the in the phase and the stage of it, is that Finixty has, like, expensive fees. And and I don't like that. Right?

But they can afford it because they are the best in it. Like, they they don't have compete competition. So if anybody here is listening to this podcast, please open another PhenixD, like, with the same API.

It's really easy for us to, like, switch between one and another, and then you have competition, and then here you go. Like, you can you can you can fight for fees. Right? Because if you have the same API as Phoenix seed has and it's easy to switch between providers,

come on. Like, they have to to to slow down with the fees. Right? And, I mean, I love you guys from from Async, but, like, it is expensive. Right? That's the the only thing that I need to complain about them.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think they they have an awesome product. And and, yes, the fees are are quite high, especially when you compare to doing

kind of self sovereign lightning. You're absolutely paying for for the convenience and them do legwork. And even as a lightning node runner myself, I still use Phoenix on on my phone as like a, you know, a backup, and I'm happy to to pay those fees. There you go. Thanks for bringing that up on screen.

I'm I'm happy to pay those fees to have that that level of convenience for where, you know, my node's fallen over or I can't access it for whatever reason. I think, yeah, they do offer a great product. And the fact that we've now got PhoenixD combined with a beautiful dashboard like yours is, you know, a a fantastic solution.

While we're talking about async, I wanna just quickly cover off some of the trade offs around Phoenix d and well, I suppose it also applies to the Phoenix mobile application as well. And some of the trade offs that people may or may not consider when using this because

we we've been chatting, you know, here for, you know, forty minutes and saying how great Phoenix is and, you know, that that hasn't changed.

But there's there's kind of like an elephant in the room here and, Miguel, I'm keen to get your thoughts here is, you know, if you're a Phoenix d user or the user of the dashboard or the mobile application, like, what happens if if async disappears tomorrow or their node goes offline, they get regulated

or whatever it where does that leave users of the dashboard, the mobile app, etcetera? Yep. That's that's what I'm okay. I'm gonna put my hater hat again. That's why I think Lightning sucks because everything is a bank now, and I think it's another bank.

And if I think it just goes away, the good part is that your funds is safe. They're gonna close the channel, and the the the funds that you have in the channel is going to your side. But, yeah, like, Lightning Now network is turning to, like, set of banks. They they have liquidity. They have their,

everything needs to go through them because they have the liquidity. They they have the best connectivity. They they're doing this, like, as professionals, and everybody else here, which is, like, hobbies. Right?

So, yeah, like, Lightning, by design, turns everything to banks, and LSPs are just like big banks. And you're right. Like, you just you don't but the the good part is, like, it's a free

banking system that's better from what we have today with solid assets that you can hold yourself. Right? So if a sync, for some reason, goes away, it will close your channel, and you get the funds back. Right?

But, yeah, that's yeah. So that's that's kind of something sorry, Q. That's kind of something that people have always warned about and worried about with Lightning since the early days, especially, like, I think, Q, and Seth all very much early days in the

samurai world and and using Whirlpool and on chain stuff, and there's a lot of hate on Lightning because of where they saw it going. Do you think there's any way to walk it back and have more sovereign use of it, or do you think this is just the way that it goes and you just have these large players and a bank like system?

This is this is this is like that by design. Like, if you guys see the presentation that Taj did for when he was presenting Lightning. And if you actually read the paper, you're gonna see that in order for Lightning to succeed, the the block size should be, like, huge.

And in order to mitigate this, now we are just like all the developers are trying to create, like, pips and stuff like that to fix this. Right? And I kind of disagree with this. I'm pretty against this. Like like, we're trying to change Bitcoin to accommodate Lightning. I don't want it to be like Bitcoin to be Lightning

development driven driven development. Right? Mhmm. So that's why I like ZK roll ups with the VPN stuff. I know it's clunky. I know but now we have, like, garbage blocks and and stuff like that. So maybe we have a chance there better than lightning. And and, yeah, like but I I feel like if you're going to always push pips and push

consensus change to just fix Lightning, I think this is a bad idea.

And and I do think I do think that we have more options, right, before starting doing this. But but, yeah, just but just me. And and everybody that's that's worked with Lightning, developers that I know, like, they gotta burn out. Like, it's it's just, like, too hard. And that's why I like Phoenix because it make my life so easy.

But yeah. But but I feel like the design of Lightning, going back to your question, the design of Lightning, it is centralized by itself. Like, it's centralized, good connectivity, lots amount of liquidity.

And at the end, you just, like it's like banks. Right? And and I and I see that's not an improvement. I think it is an improvement, but and the and the the other stuff is Lightning doesn't give, like, money to miners. So I don't know.

I feel like there's a lot of flaws, and I think we deserve better designs.

Yeah. I think we've kind of hit the limits of what Lightning is capable of, and, thankfully, people are kinda waking up to the fact that the the dream of Lightning that was initially pushed with where, like, everyone's gonna run their own node. Everyone's gonna manage their own channels.

People will earn routing fees by managing channel balances well and handling their liquidity well. Like, all of that is just dead. Like, it's In in Raspberry Pis. Running in Raspberry Pis right now. That was, like, crazy. What the fuck? Yes. That was

that was a time. Thankfully, that time is is over. I I think the the really important thing with Lightning to keep in mind, though, is that it can be a very good connective network that helps you to move Bitcoin between things without requiring custody.

And the I think that's the key. It's not really a problem with how Lightning's designed if, like, there are relatively centralized routing hubs as long as we're not trusting those routing hubs with our money. And Lightning does detach the custody with the routing side of things.

So I think it like, I'm especially excited about the the use of ARC and Spark to give people easy access to the Lightning Network. Now it's not native Lightning, like using something like PhoenixD is. Your balance is kept in Spark, so it's essentially a state chain, or it's kept in ARC, which is a little bit more complex.

But you're able to use the Lightning Network to send money to anyone else who supports the Lightning Network. So I think viewing it as this kind of connective tissue among the Bitcoin space that helps you easily send money between different networks, between different wallets, between different users

is a good end result and honestly is really what Lightning was always going to become. It was it it always lends itself towards centralized routing hubs by design. It gets worse. The more routes you have possible, the more channels you have in the network, routing gets worse, payments get slower, payments get more expensive.

So a lot of the like, what's happened, I think, is is kind of by design with how Lightning was formed, but I think there were too many false promises made in the early days of it will solve all of these problems. It will fix privacy.

It will fix all of this, and you'll be able to run it completely self sovereignly where you run your channels and everything. That's just that's not a reality. But, thankfully, there are good solutions. Like, Phoenix is probably the only native Lightning solution that is really workable,

and then pretty much everyone else has either pivoted to the custodial liquid thing, which I'm obviously not a fan of, or now to Spark or Arc, which can provide you with a really good user experience and still having access to the Lightning Network quite easily.

Yeah. I completely agree with you. And then Lightning was overpromised. Right? And then that then we need to fix this. And and and the the bad part is every time that you try to to bash Lightning with good reasons, like, people would just, like,

emotionally reply back. Like, no. No. Lightning is good. Lightning okay. That's that's fine. It's the best thing that we have so far, but, like, it's not the best. Come on. Let's just hop on that one.

That was a good try, but yeah. And and to be honest, I I did lots of things with Lightning. Test everything there. I'm I'm not I'm not touching Lightning because I don't like it. I like it because it like I said, But, I don't think you should stop on this one.

For sure. And I think the more you build with something, the more you realize what it's actually good at and what it's actually bad at. And a lot of the, like, the false promises, I think, were made by people, podcasters, who all all bash, even though I am one of them, who hadn't actually built something around Lightning

and thought that it was easier and simpler to to fulfill these promises than it actually was. But once you get into the weeds, it it it quickly becomes clear what lighting is actually good at and what it's bad at and make the most of it.

Yep. Alright. We have about five minutes before I need to begin the wrap up. We've got some listener questions for you, Miguel. I'm gonna put them up on screen wherever I can. First one comes via XMR chat from XMR enthusiasts who sent in 001 XMR and said, Miguel, can key send payments work with your phoenix d dashboard setup?

Most podcasters and content creators are using an because of the keys and payment functionality. Good. No. We cannot do this right now. My idea with the with the context here that you can put, like, the node IDs was exactly for that, but you cannot use it, like, natively.

Yeah. But that's a good that's a good question. You cannot do it now. Is that Maybe I maybe I raise an issue and try to figure out how to implement this because this is really cool. Is that a limitation of of the phoenix d implementation itself?

Yeah. Figured that. Okay. Alright. Another XMR chat we've got from Otto who sent also sent 0.01 XMR. So that LN is less shitty now. When can we have it on start? I know. All fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The the people want it. The people want it. It it it is less shitty. You can say that. It is less shitty. Yeah. And it it looks beautiful.

Yeah. Remember, like, back in the days, like, they have, like what was the name? Jumbo channels? Jumbo channels? Like, you you have, like, a limit? And remember that you can you cannot even connect with mainnet, and then and it was just testnet.

And then okay. Now we have, like, mainnet, but we don't don't use combo channels or jumbo channels. I don't remember. Remember this. And now, like, it's we can do any the lab, it's yeah. It's less shitty. We can see a long way. We've come a long way. We are fine. Yeah. Next question comes from Vibrant,

and they said, is there an option to easily route all Phoenix D traffic through Tor sorry, through a Tor proxy for better privacy? I think you might have shown something on this earlier. Like, you you can just go to settings, network, and enable Tor here. Just enable Tor. We'll connect you to run a

Tor container here. You have this hidden service here, and you can access. Yeah. It is possible. Yeah. As easy as that. One one click away. Perfect. Perfect. The the last presubmitted question we've got is from Digital Rebel.

And this they said, how does Phoenix d handle channel liquidity and fees compared to running a full LND node? We've kind of touched on this, but I I know you've got them brought there. So maybe let's just do a quick overview of the because we've Yeah. The fact that it's it can be expensive.

It can be expensive. Mostly, like, you have, like, auto liquidity on. The auto liquidity only automatically is open at 2,000,000 channels for you. So you start with 2,000,000 channels, and you can open the sets, 5,000,000 or ten ten million.

It auto supplies for you. So if you need more, liquidity gives you. But you have to be like you have to pay, like, it's 1% plus mining fees. So it is expensive. You're get, like, 1% down instantly.

And if you pay with Phoenix t Phoenix Wallet, every Lightning payment, you pay, like, 0.4% plus four sets. So, yeah, that's the fees. It's super high. I don't like it. But, again, they are the, like, they're the beast, so they can they are alone. They are running alone, so they can do whatever.

And it's worth every penny because it works. Like, I never had, like everything is easy to pay. Never had, like, faders. Like, it's everything works pretty well. Yeah. So worth to pay this this this this thing. And they, like, deserve the money.

They they always like someone. They deserve great product, for sure. Yeah. For sure. Alright, Miguel. That brings us to the end of the questions. Is there anything that you wanted to share or anything that you wanna cover off with the audience while you've

kinda got the platform or anything else that we haven't already showcased that you think might be cool just while while we wrap up for the last couple of minutes? No. I think that's it. If you want to connect me, I have my website, migomades.dev.

You can see, like, everything here, what I did, my work. You can even pay with lighting. You can even pay here if you want to. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. If you want to follow me on Twitter, that's underline migamadelis, and you can yeah.

See where I'm going. Amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. Well, I I personally wanna thank you for for building PhoenixD. It looks great. We really enjoyed talking about it on the on the Bitcoin brief.

Also, quick shout out to some of the Zaps that we've had come through on Nosto. We've Nostagang with 21, BTC Wrestle with 5,000, and Sazwall with 2,100, BTC Wrestle. Sozzle,

sorry. BTC Wrestle mentioned, I I've now got to try out Phoenix. I've never actually used it. Always been either a Zeus Maxi or a Normie Moon Wallet Enjoyer. We'll have to give that a try while BTC Wrestle, they have to let us know how you get on with that.

Okay. Max, Seth, anything else from you guys before I close this out? Not from me. Just just to say, yeah, it's it's really beautiful, and thanks for coming on and building it. Appreciate you.

It was amazing, man. Thanks for having me here. Yeah. Likewise. Absolutely love the the work and just a beautiful UI too. I don't I don't know if we really mentioned that, but it it's not just kind of the the vibe coded hacked together UI that oftentimes sees.

I just really appreciate the effort that's that's gone into that, and it's really paying off to to make Lightning, especially on the desktop, accessible. Thanks for your hard work, man.

Thank you, man. Alright. Thanks, Miguel. Thank you to everybody that stopped by, sent up, sent your comments and your questions. We really appreciate you getting involved and helping steer the conversation.

We will be back at the exact same time next week for more FreedomTech Friday goodness. Until then, hope you have a good weekend, and enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you for listening to Freedom Tech Friday. To everyone who boosted, asked questions, and participated in the show, we appreciate you all. Make sure to join us next week on Friday at 9AM EST and 2PM London.

Thanks to Seth, Max, and Q for keeping it ungovernable. And thank you to Cake Wallet Foundation, and my Nim Box for keeping the Ungovernable Misfits going. Make sure to check out ungovernablemisfits.com to see mister Crown's incredible skills and artwork.

Listen to the other shows in the feed to hear Kareem's world class editing skills. Thanks to expatriotic for keeping us up to date with Boost's XMR chats and sending in topics. John, great name and great guy, never change and never stop keeping us up to date with mining news

or continuing to grow the Mestadel. Finally, a big thanks to the unsung hero, our Canadian overlord Jordan, for trying to keep the ungovernable in check and for the endless work he puts in behind the scenes.

We love you all. Stay ungovernable.