Summary of BlueWallet Ending its Custodial Lightning Wallet Service
- BlueWallet, a Bitcoin wallet with apps in both the iOS and Android stores, has announced that it will end its custodial Lightning wallet service by April 30, 2023.
- Users are requested to remove funds from their BlueWallet custodial Lightning wallets as soon as possible. Regular BlueWallet Bitcoin wallets will not be impacted by this change.
- Going forward, BlueWallet will only support self-custody solutions.
Background Information
BlueWallet, a Bitcoin wallet with apps in both the iOS and Android stores, has announced that it will end its custodial Lightning wallet service by April 30, 2023. This announcement comes after the company’s blog post in which they explain that the Lndhub node where BlueWallet provides Lightning wallets to its users is sunsetting. While users can still withdraw their sats from their custodial Lightning wallets on LndHub node, creating new or refilling existing ones will no longer be possible.
Impact of Change
The change affects only those who use custodial Lightning wallets on Lndhub –– regular BlueWallet Bitcoin wallets and self-custody Lightning wallets (where users connect to their own Lndhub) are not impacted. Therefore, users are encouraged to move funds out of their custodial Lightning wallets before April 30th.
Lndhub Experiment
The blog post explains that Lndhub started as a weekend experiment focused on exploring a then fringe technology called the Lightning Network. Today however more mainstream services offer scalable solutions for using the network; thus making it necessary for Lndhub to transition from its current form into something else.