Why I chose to help a Mostro coordinator in Europe
I’ve been spending some time helping around MostroEuropa, and I wanted to explain why.
Not because I think everyone should trust one particular coordinator. Pretty much the opposite.
What interests me is the architecture behind Mostro: Nostr for communication, Lightning hold invoices for the trade, different clients, open source, and the possibility of having multiple coordinators.
The hold-invoice part is particularly interesting to me. The sats are genuinely locked during the trade, so calling it “nothing ever holds the funds” would be misleading. But there’s also no conventional exchange account where you deposit BTC, receive an internal balance and later ask permission to withdraw.
That distinction changes the trust model.
I wrote down why I decided to contribute to MostroEuropa and also where I think the remaining trust/risk still exists:
https://davidebtc186.substack.com/p/why-i-chose-mostroeuropa-for-peer
The question I’m most interested in discussing here:
What should a P2P coordinator be allowed to do — and what should it never be able to do?
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