Almost exactly a month ago we met in this dark corner of the Internet to talk about our desire for more NFC (near-field communication) enabled user experiences when it comes to spending bitcoin. Last month we highlighted a demo teased by Rodolfo Novak and the team at CoinKite in which they used NFC to sign a PSBT (partially signed bitcoin transaction) without having to transfer an SD card from a Coldcard to a computer. Today we meet to highlight an NFC bitcoin payment on the Lightning Network using lnurl and lnbits.
As you can see from the demo above, an individual was able to simply tap and pay an invoice over the Lightning Network using an NFC-enabled card. In the thread you can see a nice discussion about how this NFC functionality may have been implemented. Ben Arc clears everything up at the bottom of the thread and explains that this product is leveraging lnurl-withdraw in a unique way to create a one time spending condition to make this transaction possible without leaving open the ability for a vendor to drain your wallet with a malicious invoice that forces you to spend more than you desired.
While it's nowhere near perfect, this is some incredible innovation that moves the space closer to a very friendly, normie-proof user experience that could make the non-technical masses more confident when spending bitcoin. Like I said last week, the UX around Bitcoin, whether it be around spending, receiving, maintaining and protecting keys, or maintaining a sufficient level of privacy is continuously improving. This is but one example of this fact in the wild.
Shoutout to all of the developers out there pushing the industry forward by building and expanding the universe of creative possibility while adding utility to the Bitcoin stack. In time, we'll look back at these times and marvel at how far the network has come from a usability perspective.
Final thought...
It's really hot in Texas.
