Company Name: Alby
Founders: Michael Bumann, Moritz Kaminski and René Aaron
Foundation date: Open source project founded in December 2020 / Company founded in March 2022
Headquarters location: Fully remote
Amount of Bitcoin held in treasury: N/A
Number of employees: 10
Website: https://getalby.com/
Public or private? Private
Michael Bumann wants to make it easier for people to send value over the Internet.
That's why he created Alby — an open source initiative that grew into a company best known for its browser extension wallet app, which allows users to send and receive Saturdays via the Lightning Network.
Bumann, a soft-spoken and introspective German web developer with decades of experience in his field, believes that Bitcoin should be able to circulate as freely as information on the internet. To achieve this, he would like to see Lightning integrated into every corner of the web.
“The mission is to make Lightning available in web applications,” Bumann told Bitcoin Magazine. “We want this to be accessible, to have deep and real integration, something very seamless where payments no longer block the user experience.”
Today, Bumann and the Alby team are succeeding in their mission, as Alby is one of the easiest Lightning wallets to set up and use and has become a preferred choice for creators around the world.
However, what many don't know about Alby is that it's much more than just a Lightning wallet.
What is Alby?
“Alby was initially the browser extension (wallet),” Bumann said of the Alby wallet, which allows users to create a convenient LNURL address (e.g., yourname@getalby.com) that they can use to send and receive bitcoins via Lightning.
“The goal was to have the browser communicate with the Alby extension, which in turn communicates with a node on the Lightning network. Back then, we mainly had LND (a Lightning node implementation) and talking to LND from a browser was and still is super complicated,” he added.
After a while, Bumann and his team at Alby created a Wallet APIwhich can be used to integrate Lightning payments into any app. Consider integrating Lightning payments into your favorite podcasting app to get paid as a podcaster.
Alby also provides its users with an LNDHub, which allows them to connect and manage multiple Lightning accounts through one interface and one node.
Many use the Alby browser extension wallet as a custodial wallet, but users can also use it non-custodially with Alby Centerwhich allows users to connect to Alby through their own node or pay a small fee to have Alby run a node for them.
“Ideally, we would move in a direction where it would be easy enough for people to manage their own nodes and their own wallets,” Bumann said. “Anything in between those two extremes is an intermediate step.”
Alby has something for everyone, from new users to more advanced ones, which is part of the reason it has gained so much traction in just two and a half years.
In that sense, Alby has grown faster than Bumann and his team anticipated, which prompted them to make decisions. Setting up an invite-only Alby account for now, so they can meet demand, a demand that should only grow as Bumann and his team implement Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC).
Nostr (NWC) Wallet Connection
While Bumann acknowledges that Lightning is “still very small” and believes we are still in a “research phase” regarding Layer 2 and its use cases, he sees Zaps by Nostr as a great use of Lightning.
But beyond Zaps, Bumann and the Alby team found another way Nostr could help promote Lightning adoption.
They saw that they could use Nostr Relays to send Lightning bill payment requests. And so they created a protocol called Nostr (NWC) Wallet Connection together with the team of Amethysta Nostr customer.
Over the past few months, Alby has been preparing for the launch of his new wallet, which will take advantage of the new and unique capabilities that NWC brings to the table.
“We are currently on the verge of launching our new NWC-focused self-sovereign Lightning wallet,” Bumann said.
“It is a new wallet that focuses on NWC as a protocol to interact with the wallet. It is different from the typical wallet that has a send button, a receive button, and a list of transactions,” he added.
“(With this new wallet, users) only have to set up channels, liquidity, and their keys once. Then they can grant certain permissions to certain apps and allow, ‘OK, you can receive money on my behalf. You can send a certain amount of money on my behalf. Here’s a subscription service that I allow to withdraw $10 from my wallet every month,’ things like that.”
Bumann went on to say that a non-custodial Lightning wallet that accepts and distributes payments in such a way would be impossible without NWC. He added that the protocol isn’t necessarily optimized for human use. Instead, it was primarily designed to connect to other applications, and he believes this will “make many more applications possible.”
“It’s a wallet that’s optimized to be always on, because one of the limitations we have with Lightning is that you have to be online to receive and send (sats),” Bumann said.
“Especially if you want to automate things in other apps, the wallet has to be available. That’s why we said, ‘Optimize for that.’ The user doesn’t need to interact with the app. You just run it once and that’s it,” he added.
This type of wallet can be run from your desktop computer, a server, or a cloud provided by Alby. When using the cloud option, users' data and keys will be encrypted using only a password.
What's next for Alby?
While Bumann and the Alby team will be fine-tuning NWC as it rolls out (which will include the launch of an NWC mobile app), they will also be looking at other ways to bring Alby into the future.
Bumann noted that Alby does not yet have a plan to launch its own mobile app as the mobile UI does not fit well with the integrated user experience that Alby offers through its browser extension product.
He says implementing Bolt 12 is “definitely on the list,” though it doesn’t appear to be his top priority.
It is also paying attention to burgeoning cash payment systems such as Cocoa and Fed. and considering how I might incorporate them into Alby.
But above all, he and the Alby team pay attention to the feedback they receive from users in order to try to improve their product. To obtain this feedback, Alby prioritizes customer service.
“(Customer service) is also necessary because everything we do is very nascent,” Bumann said. “It has rough edges, and even enthusiastic Bitcoiners still face problems.”
Bumann and Alby's team are working to alleviate these problems in two ways:
“First, we are trying to make it easier for users to get around these obstacles and jump on the Bitcoin and Lightning bandwagon in some way,” he said.
“Secondly, it is very important for us to identify where people are having difficulties. It is a great feedback channel. We also see it as a kind of collaboration with users,” he explained.
And when Bumann says “we,” he means it. Despite being co-founder of Alby, a project that has grown by leaps and bounds in a very short time, he has remained humble and in touch with those he helps.
“It’s very important for developers who are on the code and creating the features to get feedback from users or are close to getting it,” Bumann said. “That’s why I, especially in the beginning, (went into customer support) and we all continue to do so.”
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