Weeks ago, I have set up my own ln node (Umbrel). Now I try to use the lightning network for receiving donations. Here start my questions.
- How can I set up a donation address where donors can decide how much to donate? (I have discovered "keysend" as a possibility. Unfortunately, it is not widely used among users. Isn't it?)
- How can I create an invoice for open-ended deposits?
Please take for your answers into account, I'm an UX designer without serious developer skills.
On my donation site at https://donate.ln.rene-pickhardt.de/ you can see that I use an adopted version of lnme https://github.com/bumi/lnme which is a widget that allows users to request an invoice from your node for a certain amount.
The propper why of doing this would be via BOLT 12 offers which are currently being standardized and are similar to keysend not yet supported by all wallets / implementations.
Another way of achieving your goal is by using LNURL or lightning-address which are currently widely supported but not part of the spec. Similar to my own solution based on lnme you need a webserver for LNURL or lightning-address.