Until now, Castamatic supported only keysend for Lightning payments. Keysend is fast and flexible. It doesn’t require generating invoices and it allows the app to send extra metadata along with your payment. That makes it ideal for sending value-for-value payments in podcasting. However, many wallets still don’t support keysend, which limits who you can send sats to.
With the latest update, Castamatic now supports both LNURL-pay and Lightning Address, adding compatibility with a much wider range of wallets and services.
An LNAddress looks like an email address, for example franco@getalby.com or adamcurry@strike.me. It’s an easy way to represent a payment destination. Behind the scenes, an LNAddress usually points to an LNURL-pay endpoint. The app can then use that endpoint to fetch the details of the payment and request an invoice from the receiver.
Now when Castamatic detects an LNAddress in a podcast feed, it checks what kind of payment is supported. If keysend is available, it will be used automatically, since it offers a faster and richer payment experience. If LNURL-pay is the only option, the app falls back to that so your payment can still go through.
This means podcasters are free to choose whichever wallet they prefer to receive contributions from their audience. It also brings more flexibility to the Lightning ecosystem. Podcasters can simply add their Lightning Address to their feed and forget about it — if their wallet provider makes changes to its infrastructure, Castamatic will adapt automatically.
I’m excited to bring this new level of compatibility to Castamatic. It helps fulfill the promise of Lightning for podcasting: fast, open, creator-friendly payments that just work.
Thank you for supporting open podcasting and value-for-value.