Developers

Avocadough makes an AT Protocol identity a Bitcoin payment address.
One lexicon, no server, no signups — pay @alice.bsky.social over Lightning.

Overview

An AT Protocol identity is a handle (like alice.bsky.social) anchored to a DID, with a signed data repository the user controls. Avocadough defines one small record type — xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint — that lets any AT Protocol identity publish how to pay it. Once published, anyone can resolve the handle to a Lightning payment, with nothing but public HTTP requests:

@alice.bsky.social
        |  handle resolution (well-known / DNS)
        v
did:plc:abc123…
        |  DID document (plc.directory)
        v
PDS (alice's data server)
        |  com.atproto.repo.getRecord (public, no auth)
        v
xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint
        |  preferred method, e.g. lnAddress
        v
[email protected]
        |  LNURL-pay (LUD-16)
        v
BOLT11 invoice  →  pay with any Lightning wallet

The record is settlement-agnostic: it advertises an ordered list of payment methods. Today that's a Lightning address; BOLT12 offers, raw LNURL-pay endpoints, and Cashu mints have reserved types and can be published with zero schema changes. There is no Avocadough server in the loop — resolution reads the user's own PDS, and payment goes peer-to-endpoint over Lightning.

Key concepts

• Handle & DID — the human name and the stable identifier behind it. Handles can move hosts or change; the DID and its repo persist.
• PDS — the user's Personal Data Server, which stores their signed records and serves them publicly over XRPC.
• Lexicon — an AT Protocol schema. Avocadough's lexicons live under the xyz.avocadough.* namespace.
• Lightning address (lud16) — user@domain, resolvable to a BOLT11 invoice via LNURL-pay.

The Lexicon: xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint

One canonical record per identity, stored at record key self in the user's repo. Machine-readable schema: xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint.json.

Record

Field	Type	Required	Description
methods	array of method	yes	Ways to pay this identity, resolved in priority order.
updatedAt	string (datetime)	yes	When the record was last updated.

Method

Field	Type	Required	Description
type	string	yes	Known values: lnAddress, bolt12, lnurlp, cashuMint. Clients must ignore unknown types.
value	string	yes	The endpoint itself: a lud16 address, BOLT12 offer, bech32 LNURL, or mint at-identifier, depending on type.
priority	integer	no	Resolution order across methods; lower is preferred. Methods without a priority sort last, in published order.

Example record

{
  "$type": "xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint",
  "methods": [
    { "type": "lnAddress", "value": "[email protected]", "priority": 0 }
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-10T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Semantics

• Record key is the literal self — an identity has exactly one canonical payment endpoint record.
• Resolvers walk methods in priority order and use the first type they support.
• Unknown type values are skipped, never an error — new rails can be added without breaking old clients.
• The record is public, like the rest of an AT Protocol repo. Publish only an address you're happy to associate with your identity.

Resolving a payment endpoint

Resolution is unauthenticated end to end. Given a handle:

1. Handle → DID. GET https://{handle}/.well-known/atproto-did, falling back to the DNS TXT record _atproto.{handle}.
2. DID → DID document. https://plc.directory/{did} for did:plc, or https://{domain}/.well-known/did.json for did:web. Verify the document's alsoKnownAs claims the handle.
3. DID document → PDS. Take the service endpoint with id #atproto_pds.
4. PDS → record. Fetch the payment endpoint record (no auth required).
5. Method → payment. For lnAddress: LNURL-pay turns it into a BOLT11 invoice for your amount, payable by any Lightning wallet.

Fetch the record with curl

curl "https://{pds}/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.getRecord?repo={did}&collection=xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint&rkey=self"

Then turn the Lightning address into an invoice

# [email protected]  →  LNURL-pay discovery
curl "https://getalby.com/.well-known/lnurlp/alice"

# → { "callback": "...", "minSendable": 1000, "maxSendable": ... }

# request a 21 sat (21000 msat) invoice
curl "{callback}?amount=21000&comment=hello"

# → { "pr": "lnbc210n1..." }   ← pay this with any Lightning wallet

Publishing your endpoint

Publishing is a standard authenticated AT Protocol record write to your own PDS — the same operation any Bluesky post is:

POST {pds}/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.putRecord
{
  "repo": "{your-did}",
  "collection": "xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint",
  "rkey": "self",
  "record": {
    "$type": "xyz.avocadough.payment.endpoint",
    "methods": [
      { "type": "lnAddress", "value": "[email protected]", "priority": 0 }
    ],
    "updatedAt": "2026-06-10T12:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

Or use the SparrowTek atproto CLI, which wraps the whole round-trip:

atproto login your-handle.bsky.social        # app password
atproto payment publish --ln-address [email protected]
atproto payment resolve @your-handle.bsky.social --amount-sats 21

That last command is the entire pipeline in one line: handle → DID → PDS → record → LNURL-pay → BOLT11 invoice.

AvocadoughKit (Swift)

AvocadoughKit is the open-source Swift package that implements this layer — it's what the Avocadough app uses to send to handles, and what Effem uses to pay podcast boost recipients. It sits on top of SparrowTek's CoreATProtocol and provides:

• PaymentTargetResolver — classifies and resolves anything a user pastes: @handle, DID, Lightning address, BOLT11 invoice, or LNURL.
• PaymentEndpointRecord — typed lexicon model with priority-ordered methods.
• PaymentEndpointPublisher — publish, read back, and remove your record.
• LNURLPayService — Lightning address → BOLT11 (LUD-06/12/16/21).

import AvocadoughKit

// Pay an identity — no auth, no server
let target = try await PaymentTargetResolver().resolve("@alice.bsky.social")
if let lud16 = target.preferredLightningAddress,
   let address = LightningAddress(lud16) {
    let invoice = try await LNURLPayService().invoice(for: address, amountMsat: 21_000)
    // pay invoice.pr with your Lightning stack (e.g. Nostr Wallet Connect)
}

// Become payable
try await PaymentEndpointPublisher().publish(
    lightningAddress: "[email protected]",
    repo: yourDID
)

Resources

• Lexicon schema (JSON)
• AT Protocol documentation
• LNURL specifications (LUDs) — LUD-06 pay flow, LUD-16 Lightning addresses
• Nostr Wallet Connect — how the Avocadough app talks to your Lightning wallet
• SparrowTek on Tangled