With $ 1.5 million in seed funding secured, Bolt Labs wants to bring privacy features to the lightning network and other blockchain solutions.
CoinDesk
Vidi, Vici, Satoshi: The Lightning Torch Has Reached Its Final Destination
The Lightning Torch, a Lightning Network payment that has been forwarded to bitcoiners around the world via Twitter, has run its course and reached its end in the charitable hands of Bitcoin Venezuela.
It’s grown a lot since we last covered it in February. In fact, the term “Torch” doesn’t seem to do it justice anymore. At this point, it could rightly be called a bonfire.
Sparkswap, World’s First Lightning Atomic Swap Exchange, Now in Beta
Bitcoin’s first decentralized exchange to make use of the Lightning Network’s Atomic Swaps is now in beta.
Sparkswap, an exchange with backing from Pantera Capital (which announced its ambitious mission to become the most decentralized bitcoin exchange on the market in August 2018), has now opened its beta to users. Leveraging the Lightning Network, the exchange is non-custodial and trading is decentralized. Users will be able to execute buy and sell orders between each other directly and, thanks to atomic swapping, they’ll also be able to trade coins across blockchains.
Bolt-A-Thon, a Virtual Lightning Network Event, Invites Borderless Progress
Bolt-A-Thon, a unique kind of Lightning Network hackathon and conference kicks off today, April 5, 2019, to help gather contributors from all over the world and propel Bitcoin’s vital Layer 2 solution. But rather than host the event in person, the organizers adopted a core tenet of the Lightning Network itself into the very fabric of Bolt-A-Thon.
“The Lightning Network was built around the idea of financial inclusivity,” explained Andrew Yang, the COO at BlockFuse and an event organizer. “Anyone in the world can pay and it can be done pseudonymously … As the world’s first online Lightning Network and hackathon, that’s exactly what the Bolt-A-Thon was designed to be.”
Bitrefill Adds Thor Turbo to Speed Lightning Connections
The crypto payment platform Bitrefill has announced an upgrade to its Thor service.
The upgrade is dubbed “Thor Turbo,” and its expected to speed up the process of connecting to Bitrefill's Lightning node, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.
Bitrefill launched the Thor service in January 2019 as an on-demand Lightning channel service that allows users to receive payments whether they have bitcoin loaded into their Lightning wallets or not.
Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine via email, Bitrefill COO John Carvalho said that, since Thor launched, the startup has opened hundreds of Lightning channels with customers and hopes to soon reach the thousands.
10 Passes to Go: Bitcoin’s Lightning Torch Will Soon Burn Out
The globe-trotting bitcoin payments experiment is nearing its end, having attracted participants like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
CoinDesk
Zebpay Integrates Bitcoin Lightning Payments on Its Mobile App
Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Zebpay now supports Lightning payments. The exchange announced the news via a blog post, where it claims to be the "first major exchange" to enable Lightning payments for its users.
Per the report, Zebpay users can now login into their wallet and use their bitcoin balances to make micro-purchases for free.
“Making Bitcoin technology widely accessible is a key component of our roadmap. Today, with the integration of the Lightning Network, we have taken yet another step in this direction,” Zebpay's CEO Ajeet Khurana explained in the release.
Analysis Shows Lightning Network Suffers From Trust Issues Exacerbated by Rising Fees
Over the last two years, the Lightning Network has been touted as the scaling solution for the Bitcoin Core (BTC) network. However, the solution has been heavily criticized for its lack of security, and on March 28, Bitcoin Unlimited’s chief scientist Peter Rizun wrote an interesting evaluation of the Lightning Network’s “dirty little secret.”
Also read: Mempool ‘Spam’ and Rising Fees: The Consequences of Veriblock’s Mainnet Launch
Lightning Loop Lets Users Empty Lightning Channels Without Closing Them
Lightning Labs, the development team working to grow the Lightning Network, just released the alpha version of a new protocol called Lightning Loop.
Lightning Loop is designed to give users the ability to deposit and withdraw bitcoin from their payment channels (the two-way payment gateways that allow users to send and receive funds to and from each other) without closing these channels entirely.
“Lightning channels are like tubes of money: the more you send the more you can receive, and the other way around,” according to a blog post written by Lightning Lab developers Alex Bosworth and Bryan Vu. “Money moves around in the tube, but the total amount of funds remains constant. So, unlike other payment systems, Lightning requires ‘inbound capacity’ in order to receive funds.”
Tippin.me Takes Off at Lightning Speed With More Than 14,000 New Users
As the new Lightning network (LN) protocol continues to take the Crypto-Twitterverse by storm, it’s taking at least one new app with it, as the tipping and micropayment app Tippin.me catches on like wildfire. Founder Sergio Abril told Bitcoin Magazine he is “overwhelmed” by the interest and support he is receiving from around the world.
Struck by the potential success of the new Lightning network protocol, Abril created Tippin.me three months ago as a way to enable Lightning micropayments without a user having to set up an LN node.
Lightning Network Wallet App Tippin Continues to Gain Users
Tippin.me, an independent project developing a simple browser extension and web custodial wallet to receive and manage Bitcoin (BTC) through the Lightning Network, reportedly has over 14,000 signups since launching 3 months ago. According to research by crypto analyst Kevin Rooke that was confirmed by Tippin creator Sergio Abril, the app has seen some notable growth […]
SludgeFeed
Business Owner’s Seething Critique of the Lightning Network Goes Viral
A business owner who runs a media company in Australia and pays employees remotely in the Philippines has given his honest opinion on what it’s like to use the Lightning Network (LN). Jason Smith’s experience of attempting to use LN for payments was filled with frustration. He reports that the fundamental structure of the offchain solution is riddled with problems.
Also Read: Report: Lightning Network Still Way off Being Ready for Commercial Use
Lightning Network: Cool Enough for Twitter Jack and Fidelity But Not Iran
On Feb. 22, bitcoiners rejoiced when the financial banking giant Fidelity was handed the ‘Lightning torch’ as the Lightning Network’s social experiment was passed on to its latest bearer. Then, two days later, the new Lightning torch holder made the decision to exclude passing it on to a cryptocurrency executive from Iran because of U.S. sanctions. After a few words were exchanged between the torch holder and onlooking cryptocurrency supporters, an argument erupted over the debacle. The exclusion showed that a good portion of the community believes it is wrong to censor individuals over arbitrary laws and invisible borders.
Fidelity Passes the Torch in the Lightning Network Trust Chain
Financial services giant Fidelity Investments, which manages more than $ 2.6 trillion in client assets, has become the latest big name to participate in the ongoing Lightning Network Trust Chain, a community-driven initiative started by hodlonaut. We and our research team at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology have received the #LNTorch ⚡from @Wiz. Who should we pass […]
SludgeFeed
Beam (BEAM) Plans to Develop a Mimblewimble Compatible Lightning Network
Recently launched privacy coin Beam (BEAM) revealed on Tuesday that it is planning to develop and launch the very first Mimblewimble-compatible Lightning Network, a second-layer scaling solution for fast and cheap transfers of value off-chain. Discover how we're planning to develop and launch a Mimblewimble compatible Lightning Network https://t.co/2bCa4409nt #mimblewimble #SovereigntyByDesign — @Beamprivacy (@beamprivacy) February 12, 2019 […]
SludgeFeed
CoinGate Adds Support for Litecoin (LTC) Lightning Network Payments
Lithuania-based CoinGate, a payment gateway for blockchain payments, announced last week that it has added support for Litecoin (LTC) Lightning Network payments, allowing for faster payments with lower fees. 4,500+ Merchants Now Accept Litecoin Lightning Network Payments.⚡️$ ltc $ btc #crypto @CoinGatecom https://t.co/wAlmWIPVoe — Litecoin.com (@LitecoinDotCom) February 9, 2019 According to an accompanying blog post by the Litecoin Foundation, […]
SludgeFeed
Tippin.me Teases Its Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network Tip Button for Twitter
Tippin, an independent project developing a simple web custodial wallet to receive and manage Bitcoin (BTC) through the Lightning Network, announced this week that it will soon roll-out a Chrome extension for sending and receiving BTC tips directly on Twitter. 🤔 What if you had a Chrome extension that inserts a https://t.co/ZnASkDvUDU button in every Tweet?#LightningNetwork #LightningTorch […]
SludgeFeed
Can I Trust BitFury’s Peach Lightning With My Data? Maybe
Announced at the end of January, Bitfury’s production-ready suite of Lightning Network products and services, Peach, appears to offer everything a developer, user or merchant could want from a Lightning implementation. It comes with built-in, e-commerce plug-ins, has a hardware component for point-of-sale, a toolkit for developers and its own Lightning node to ground the whole outfit.
The suite, with its many uses, has a wide reach … a bit too wide, one crypto analysis group thinks.
Koala Studio Launches Gaming Platform Built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network
Koala Studio, a new online gaming platform built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, launched this week with the release of its take on the classic game of chess: Lightning Chess. We’re LIVE! After months of long nights and countless checkmates. Lightning Chess♟️and Koala Studio 🐨🎮 are finally ready for prime time. Come experience the new Lightning […]
SludgeFeed
Jack Dorsey ‘Passes the Torch’ in the Bitcoin Lightning Network Trust Chain
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, has long been one of the most vocal supporters of Bitcoin (BTC) from the traditional tech world. This support was taken to new heights on Tuesday when Dorsey participated in the ongoing Lightning Network Trust Chain, a community-driven initiative started by hodlonaut to build awareness around the Lightning Network […]
SludgeFeed
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