Breez Wallet Review
As the Bitcoin lightning network is growing exponentially we like to review some of the most promising lightning network wallets. That’s why in this Breez wallet review we take a look at the Breez wallet and its special features. Breez is a complete non-custodial lightning wallet with features for all sorts of Bitcoin users. Including Podcast 2.0 and a merchants tool.
For all users of Bitcoin that like to stay in control and keep their privacy Breez Could be the wallet for you. Especially if you plan on accepting payments as a merchant, using the Bitcoin lightning network.
Breez is one of the great Bitcoin lightning wallets that push adoption of the technology while also creating a better, smoother experience for their users.
Check out the Breez website here.
So let’s now take a closer look at our Breez wallet review!
How to use Breez
To start using Breez wallet we will first need to do a small set-up. It’s not much but as Breez works as a non-custodial wallet we will need to make a backup. This way you will not lose your funds by mistake. For those that don’t already know “non-custodial” means that not Breez or any other party has access to your funds. Only you hold that access making it not possible for them to restore your funds.
Your backup with Breez is not like a normal private key or a 12-word phrase. But rater a cloud back up to your google drive. This way you can always retrieve your wallet by just logging into your account. If you want you can also put extra encryption over this backup so that it is even more protected.
Now that you have made your backup you need to add some funds to Breez. To receive funds over the lightning network Breez needs to open a lightning channel to you. This they do automatically when you send funds from one wallet to your new Breez wallet. But it comes with a one-time setup cost of 0.4% with a minimum of 2000 Sats. Breez will keep this channel open for at least a month and longer if it stays active.
Learn more about inbound liquidity here!
Design
Breez wallet has a design that is optimized for using the lightning network for merchants, podcasts, and other lightning apps. On the first page, the main wallet page we find our standard send, receive and scan QR-code options to spend our balance. Clicking either of these gives us the option to send or receive and to buy Bitcoin.
On the top left corner of the wallet, we find a small wallet icon. If we click this we open the menu. Here we have 5 tabs, the Balance, Podcasts, Point of Sale, Apps, and Preferences tabs.
On the Podcast tab, we find access to podcasting 2.0. Here you can find new podcasts and also pay them Sats by giving them a boost or by streaming Sats to the podcaster. Making it so that the longer you listen the more you donate to them.
Then on the third tab, we have the point of sale feature. Here you have some extras for merchants. Making it easier to sell products using the lightning network. More on this later.
Then in apps, we find, well apps for the lightning network including apps like Bitrefill, LNpizza, Boltz, and many more. The last tab “preferences” gives us the option to make some small changes to the wallet. Like changing the Bitcoin node it connects to, or the fiat currencies that we see. In case you want to change from light to dark mode. You can do so as well at the top of the menu. Here you can also change the wallet’s icon and name for your personal or business use.
Storage and Private Keys in Breez
Creating a backup with Breez is as simple as it can be. Although if you have been using other custodial lightning wallets or a regular Bitcoin wallet it can be a bit confusing at first. To not go into the technicals too much. With Breez you can make a backup in the cloud. Google could be precise. When you start using the wallet you will have a pop-up telling you to create a backup till you do so or you tell it to stop asking. This backup is stored in Google drive. So that you can always get back to it in case you lost your device etc.
But if you do not trust Google enough to not steal your data, do not worry. You are not alone. That’s why with Breez you can also put extra encryption over the backup. That you can decrypt with a 12-word phrase you receive in the Breez app when making the backup.
Lightning wallet for merchants
Not only does Breez support features for the individual that likes self custody. They also provide a great feature for merchants that want to accept Bitcoin payments. The POS (point of sale) features give merchants a tab with a calculator and the options to add prices for products. This way they can easily add together the prices of purchase and click “charge” to create a payable QR-code for the customer.
The merchant has here to option to display the prices in any currency they want. So if a product costs 1 Euro. The app will just charge the customer 1 Euro in Satoshis at the current Bitcoin price. Making it super easy to receive the amount they want to be dominated in the currency they want. But still receiving Sats and the customer still paying in Sats.
Podcasting 2.0
The Breez wallet has unique a podcasting 2.0 tab. Here you can participate in the Podcasting 2.0 ecosystem and support podcasters using lightning. In the podcast section, you can search for and listen to a variety of podcasts. These podcasts have more freedom as they do not need to depend on an advertisement platform. With Podcasting 2.0 the listeners have the option to support their favorite podcast by paying them micro-donations.
These micropayments can be either paid at once or streamed to a podcaster. So let’s say you are listening to a podcast in the Breez app, you can select either the”boost” button or put in a Sats/min amount. The boost will pay a one-time payment to the podcaster whereas the Sats/min will stream the payment to the podcaster. Making you pay for the time you watched. For now, you can also put this amount at 0, making it essentially free. But if you want to support them you can put in any amount you want.
Breez Fees
Breez’s main business model comes from being a Lightning Service Provider (LSP). This means they provide you with certain services and you pay a fee for them. These fees are small and sometimes happen in the background. As an LSP Breez charges basically 3 types of fees.
The first one is Routing fees. You only pay this when routing a payment through the Breez node and had a 1 sat base fee in most cases. So you will probably not even notice this as it is so low.
Then there is the Set up (channel creation) fee. Like we mentioned before. This will cost between 2000 Sats and 0.4% of the incoming payment. But you will not have to pay for this every time.
And last is streaming Sats to a podcast. This will cost you a maximum of 5% of the amount. Making it worth it for Breez as a podcasting platform provider.
Breez support
Breez as a wallet can be a little bit complicated if you use a wallet like this for the first time. But you will get the hang of it quite quickly. Because of this, we think quick support and help from their team is needed and Breez just seems to do that perfectly. We have contacted them several times over the weeks to learn some things we didn’t fully understand and also to see how their response was. And we are happy to say it was super, super fast. Especially on Telegram were when we would ask a question in the group. Someone from Breez would respond to us almost always within 1 minute. Give us helpful information or learn full articles to help us get going.
As a wallet support service, Breez definitely makes it to the top of the list with the fastest responses we have seen so far.
Before you go asking their staff or Telegram members, you should definitely check out their Github help/FAQ page. Here you can find almost all of the questions you could have already pre answered. This makes it both easier for you and their staff. So they can focus on more urgent matters. And you can learn as much as you want by yourself. Their Github consists of many good articles explaining almost everything.
Just in case you have a question for their support? you can contact them here.
Download Breez
If you like what you have read about so far, you can download Breez for both Android, IOS. Do note that both are supposedly still in Beta. So using them comes at your own risk! You can find them all by clicking here. If you do end up downloading it, please let us know your opinion about it on our review page. Let’s now look at some features, pros, and cons down below.
Features
When It comes to extra features (besides sending and receiving crypto) Breez wallet offers the following.
- Podcasting 2.0 hub
- Access to lightning apps
- Easy backup using Google
- Point of Sale feature for merchands
Improvements
Like every other Wallet out there, the Breez wallet has flaws and missing things. The flaws that we point out are of course based on our personal opinion and we would like to point out that they don’t always have to be a hindrance to anyone.
Honestly, Breez is a pretty chill wallet and although it could maybe add more lightning apps and features in the future, for now, we really don’t have any drastic improvements that we could find. We hope that the app comes out of Beta soon and can start boosting the adoption of Bitcoin.
If Breez would add new things in the future we would be most excited to see stable coins on top of the lightning network. This could come to the layer 2 network this year. Wheater or not Breez will implement it when it is out is still to see. We hope they do. Because it could boost the point of sale feature making it much easier and cheaper for merchants to use the lightning network instead of Visa or Mastercard.
Conclusion
Breeze is a great non-custodial mobile crypto wallet that offers great options for those that want to make use of the full aspects of the lightning network. Also, stores could easily use the wallet making it simple and cheap for them to earn in BTC. Although the wallet is great for merchants and non-custodial fans. It does have a bit of a barrier for no coiners. As you need to pay some Sats to really start using it.
For younger people or people that like to play Bitcoin games, this might not be ideal. Because receiving a 50 Sats payment from Bitcoin Bounce will cost you a one-time payment of 2000 Sats. Because of this, the wallet might not be great for boosting the adoption of super new people (pleps). But it could boost the adoption for self custody when these Pleps learn more about Bitcoin and decide to take custody of their BTC themselves. Plus the fact that it is a great tool for shop owners that want to give their customers more options to also pay in Bitcoin.
The rating
Although still in Beta Breez performs perfectly and meets all the requirements of a great non-custodial Bitcoin lightning wallet. We decided to give the Breez wallet a 4,4-star rating out of 5 stars. Leaving some space for new ideas in the future. But with already a great Bitcoin product for non-custodial users and merchants alike.
Although here at Yada we never give financial advice or advice on which crypto wallet to use. we do however share our opinion, and we believe that the Breez wallet is a recommendable Bitcoin lightning network wallet for all crypto users around the world!
We really want to wish the best to their team, and its users alike. We hope this Breez Wallet review can be useful for their users and their future developments.
The end
We hope you enjoyed our Breez wallet review. In case you do not agree with our Breez wallet review? You can test it out yourself and write your own Breez wallet review on Yada Wallets today! And also don’t forget to check out what other people think about the Breez wallet.
Extra note: As always check the date and the update of this review to see if it is relevant. Wallets can add new functions and change designs to improve their product so a bad review now won’t mean they can’t be great in the future.
FAQ
What is a lightning channel?
The Bitcoin lightning network is structured with many different payment channels from one node to another. To transact between nodes payment channels need to be created between them. These channels allow the nodes to send funds from one node to another. So John can send some BTC to Jake and then Jake sends that same amount to Jacob. In this example Both John and Jacob have a payment channel with Jake but not with each other. Jake passes on the payment making the whole network one giant payment spiderweb. With many different channels connected to many others.
A channel is thus the connection that these nodes have with each other, that are loaded with BTC so they have the funds to send back and forward. This way they can transact multiple times before settling the final balance on the Bitcoin blockchain.
More about Lightning network and channel liquidity.
What are routing fees?
When sending a transaction on the Bitcoin lightning network, your transaction will be passed on through multiple nodes before finding the one the payment is meant for. To insentience nodes to pass on your payment, you pay them a small fee called the “routing fee”. These fees are usually super small. So that the network stays super cheap to use and can support micropayments.
Can lightning replace Bitcoin?
Well not really. Lightning is built as a layer 2 on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Meaning that lightning is essentially Bitcoin but on another level. It will thus never replace Bitcoin. But we could expect that in the future the majority of payments will happen on it. Because you can send super-cheap small transactions over it for daily purchases. And the Bitcoin blockchain will take the larger payments. Plus it will keep on securing the whole network as its main security layer.
Can I use stable coins on lightning?
Not yet, but there are some teams working on bringing stable coins to the lightning network. We are very excited to see this happening and think it could boost the use of the network as a whole. When stable coins will come to the network is still not sure be it could be as early as this year. When it does we will definitely write about it!
What other wallets use the Lightning network?
Many others do! We reviewed some of them!