Reordering buyer steps to reduce latency after order acceptance

[RemoRitzmann]

I have used the bot many times and noticed a recurring friction point in the buy flow. From a seller’s perspective, it might be beneficial to swap steps 6 and 7 in the current order description.

Currently it is:
6. If you want to buy, publish your order using the /buy command and wait until a seller takes it. You can cancel the order at any time by using the /cancel command.
7. Once somebody takes your buy order, you must create a LN invoice and send it to the bot. After that, you need to contact your seller to get your FIAT payment instructions. Once you have paid the seller, you should use the /release command. The bot will send you the sats to your LN invoice.

In practice, this means the seller has to wait for the buyer to notice the acceptance and create an invoice, which often introduces unnecessary delays. Messages are not always seen immediately, and this waiting time is, in my experience, the main downside of the otherwise excellent bot.

Proposed idea:
After the seller accepts the order, the bot could immediately prompt (or require) the buyer’s LN invoice before continuing with the FIAT payment coordination. This would shorten the critical path and could easily reduce the overall trade duration by ~30%.

The bot could still:
Automatically request the invoice if it has not been provided yet.
Enforce existing timeouts and cancellation rules.
Keep the current escrow / release logic unchanged.

Simply requesting and collecting the invoice earlier would already improve responsiveness and reduce idle time for sellers.

This could be implemented as:
An early-invoice step after order acceptance, or request the buyer to make an invoice during setup of the /buy command.

This idea might belong in Discussions rather than as a strict change request, since there may be downsides or edge cases I’m currently not seeing. I wanted to share it because, from repeated real-world usage, waiting for the other party to react is the main bottleneck I experience.

Best regards, Remo

[grunch]

Hi @RemoRitzmann thanks for your post, we really appreciate it, and yes you are right, this add friction to the oirder flow, it can happen that a buyer for any reason don't add the invoice in 15 minutes and lose the the whole operation.

We have a solution for this already implemented, you can add a lightning address with the command /setaddress your@lightningaddress.com, then when you are buying @lnp2pBot will ask a new invoice for the right amount to that LN address so you skip that part, at the end you will receive your sats on the LN address you provided, let me know if that helps.

[knocte]

you can add a lightning address with the command /setaddress

Would that address allow BOLT12?