Last week we got a call from an Apple employee. That call was about removing our “marketplace” feature.
Apparently it is not permitted to have 3rd party not embedded code for payments in the Apple app store when presented in form of store or store-like interface. This is point 4.7 on the review guidelines for the other teams this issue may concern.
This is obviously terrible news 😢
Terrible news for all the indie devs that we are supporting, promoting, and sending traffic to. Now will have one less source of traffic to count on.
And, it means Apple doesn’t have or provide a solution for wallets to work with lapps/dapps. Which, taking into consideration their monopoly, is something they should provide solutions on. It also reveals a lack of adaptation to new trends and making it difficult for innovation to happen in their eco-system.
A wallet is, at the end-of-day, more like a browser or a gateway type of interface than a “wallet itself”. It is a way for users to interact with the Bitcoin network and with Bitcoin related services. Bitcoin is here to stay. Bitcoin won’t change. Apple should adapt and provide solutions for wallet developers to work with Bitcoin services.
The “Marketplace” feature consists of two elements, a Lightning and Bitcoin enabled services directory and a “Lapp Browser”, that interacts and understands Bitcoin features through protocols like the WebLN.
For all the developers using Bluewallet Lapp browser, the Lapp Browser will still be available and can be easily deeplinked to provide a better experience for direct send/receive.
Example:
lapp://openlappbrowser?url=your_urlencoded_link_here
We will think of something else and find new solutions. Any suggestion is very welcome. For now, we are extremely sad to announce that the Marketplace feature was removed from the iOS (not on android) version.
Big thanks for all the support we have received. Keep the feedback and ideas coming. We will keep building!
If you wanna hangout here is our group. ✌️
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