BTCPay Server 1.3.0 - LNURL, Lightning Address, Taproot and UI goodies

It's been two months since the last (opens new window) BTCPay Server major update, and the team has been hard at work pushing through a number of efforts in that time. We're thrilled to release a new major version - 1.3.0!

BTCPay Server 1.3.0 includes support for LNURL-Pay, Lightning address, and Taproot; Lightning support for topup invoices and pull payments; crowdfunding app redesign, Greenfield API enhancements, lots of UI improvements, and several bug crushes.

We won't cover them all in this release post, but as usual, the high-time preference crowd can view the full changelog (opens new window) directly.

To update your BTCPay Server, simply navigate to your Server Settings > Maintenance tab and click Update or use btcpay-update.sh in the command line.

# LNURL and Lightning Addresses ⚡

The Lightning Network ecosystem moves lightning fast, and we're trying to bring you all of the latest bleeding-edge improvements. We're happy to introduce support for LNURL and Lightning addresses!

# LNURL-Pay 🔥

LNURL (opens new window) is a Lightning network protocol that improves the payments user-experience. While the protocol introduces several flows, our focus in this release is on LNURL-Pay.

Upon enabling this feature in your Lightning Payment method, a user can now pay the invoice using a LNURL-Pay compatible wallet.

This adds a few nice additions on top of BTCPay Server invoices, such as the ability to use topup invoices (invoice without the pre-defined amount) with lightning, and the ability to leave comments when making a payment. If you're accepting tips or donations, you can now enable this feature and see comments your donors left you in your invoice settings.

# LNURL-Pay & Print Point of Sale 🏪

Traditionally, the easiest way to accept bitcoin payments in a small retail shop is to print out and display a QR code of your address. However, address re-use is a bad privacy practice. Furthermore, it's impossible to differentiate payments coming into a single address easily, making invoice management a total nightmare. This is why we're excited to introduce our new Point of Sale option - Print.

By utilizing the LNURL-Pay protocol, we created a separate view in our POS app, allowing you to print out a static, re-usable QR code for every product in the app. This feature will enable you to accept payments without having a device to display your BTCPay Server UI on the spot. The customer would need an LNURL-Pay compatible wallet to scan a QR to pay. For every payment coming into your static QR-code, BTCPay Server generates invoices on the fly, tracking it against your preferred currency. That means that you can easily export these invoices, manage them for accounting purposes, and even refund them!

# Lightning Addresses 📧

Lightning Addresses (opens new window) leverage the LNURL capabilities and enable you to create a human readable address to be paid to, instead of a bitcoin address string and they look like email addresses.

In BTCPay Server, you are now able to configure and create such addresses, so that someone that wants to pay you, can simply send funds to a Lightning Address that looks like the following: you@yourbtcpay.com. You can enable Lightning Address under Store > Integrations, but make sure you have enabled LNURL in your Lightning payment method settings first.

BTCPay Server will generate an invoice for every payment coming to your lightning address on the fly and add it in the back-office. In case you enable the currency under advanced settings, your instance will do rate-conversions. If you're sharing your instance and Lightning node with others, they can also create their own addresses.

So what are you waiting for? Enable your lightning address and share it on Twitter to accepts tips in a non-custodial way, instantly.

# Taproot woot woot 🌱

BTCPay Server 1.3.0 adds the ability to create and track wallets that use the new Taproot format. This feature will be available starting block 709632, at which point Taproot becomes activated on the bitcoin network.

BTCPay Server already introduced Taproot sending support last August, and this was the last missing part for full Taproot support.

For more information on Taproot as a network upgrade, you can visit a few of these uncurated posts here (opens new window) or here (opens new window).

Please note that we don't recommend using only taproot supported wallets in your stores at first, since not all wallets your customers and users will be sending funds support Taproot just yet.

# Lightning network topup invoices 🧾

Our Topup invoice feature, released in 1.2.0 (opens new window) now support Lightning network as a payment method. This means that you can create an invoice without an amount and reduce the friction for specific payment flows. We've expanded the topup capabilities to both the Point of sale and crowdfunding apps.

Topup invoices can be configured through the Custom price in the cart/perk item settings. When set up by the merchant, this enables the customer to select the price paid for that specific item with no minimum imposed by the merchant. To address edge-cases, we have also introduced a new Minimum price setting, to enable users to pay a custom price for a specific item, but with a floor price set by the merchant.

# Pull Payments, but Lightning fast! 🚄

Our Pull Payments feature is receiving an upgrade in this release.

You can now add Lightning as a payment method to your Pull Payment, to enable your customers to get their refunds at the speed of light!

Pull Payments with Lightning enabled also support LNURL and Lightning Addresses mentioned earlier.

# Continuation of our UI updates 🎨

Since the beginning of 2021, our design contributors have improved a number of pages in the interface. This release includes a number of these updated pages and a number of Bootstrap related updates. These updates, as well as the new UI enables us to improve a number of views so that hopefully, users with minimal technical savviness gain clarity on how some of the more complex features can benefit them.

# Crowdfunding with love 💚

Our Crowdfunding app has received a general UI lifting in BTCPay Server 1.3.0.

Each year, BTCPay Server performs a crowdfund for projects or causes that we like, in association with other Open-Source communities.

This year, we associated with Bitcoin Design (opens new window) members and launched Bitcoin Smiles (opens new window) to provide dental healthcare to elderly people in El Salvador. This crowdfunding campaign is still active by the way. Nudge-nudge

The campaign enabled us to detect shortcomings in the UI layout of our crowdfunding page, so we decided to act on it and refurbish it! The new crowdfunding page has a more modern look, more easily visible Donation buttons and crowdfund goals.

# Payment and Store settings changes ⚙️

Over the years and with every release, we have added features, options, settings and customizations to nearly every page when it comes to Store configuration. It was becoming too much, so we decided to clean-up these views, move a number of settings to where it makes more sense.

The improved navigation in your store now differentiates high-level Payment Methods options from fine grained Payment Method settings and Checkout Appearance customizations amongst numerous other changes.

# Greenfield API 🏗️

The Greenfield API is still being perfected and additions are being made to it in every update.

Today, here's what's new and improved in Greenfield:

Adds a Payment Settled webhook event
Returns a negative undue when overpaid
Adds ability to specify default payment method

For a full list of what our API can do, visit the Greenfield documentation (opens new window)

That's going to be all for highlights of this BTCPay Server 1.3.0 release!

As usual, if you have problems, feedback, feature requests regarding BTCPay Server, feel free to reach out on our community chat (opens new window). We hope you enjoy what this update has to offer.

As always, thank you to our invaluable contributors, we love you:

The BTCPay Server team 💚.