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Buda, one of Chile’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, has recently introduced support for Lightning Network (LN) payments on its platform, to allow its users to experiment with the second layer scaling solution. Bitcoin Exchange Now Accepts Lightning Network Payments According to a recently published blog post, users will be able to pay via
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There’s a new exchange system under development called Zigzag.io, an app that allows users to swap bitcoin core for other digital assets like bitcoin cash, dash, and ethereum over the Lightning Network. The beta application is currently available to test cryptocurrency trades as the project launched on the main-network during the first week of September.
Also Read: Electron Cash Developer Reveals In-Wallet BCH Fundraiser Prototype
The Lightning Network, a “second layer” payment protocol that operates on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, has rapidly gained attention over the last year as many believe it to be a solution to Bitcoin’s ongoing scalability issues. Currently, the Lightning Network, which leverages bidirectional payment channels without delegating custody of funds, has a capacity of 115.59 BTC […]
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A Brazillian computer programmer built a Coca-Cola vending machine that accepts bitcoin payments over the Lightning Network (LN). Bitcoin-Powered Coke Vending Machine Ricardo Reis described his feat in a Medium post on Oct. 2, in which he also mentioned the accessories that were employed to create the bitcoin-enabled Coke portal. In addition to applied programming techniques … Continued
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We all dream of the day we can buy a coke (or other cola flavoured soft drink) through the power of the lightning network. Wouldn’t it be great if we could swap a few satoshi’s for a nice cold glass of coke?
Well, now, thanks to the creative mind of Ricardo Reis, a hardware hacker from Spain, you can do just that.
Reis has created a hand built Coca Cola vending machine that operates on the lightning network to provide users a glass of the good stuff in exchange for Bitcoin.
A cafe in Switzerland has become the first in the world to release a self-service shop which allows customers to order menu items using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network (LN).
energyKitchen, located in the country’s capital Bern, has begun offering coffee, drinks and food items via an online shop and QR codes located outside its physical premises.
Arguably one of the simplest consumer-oriented Lightning implementations, the shop allows Bitcoin holders to pay directly using a Lightning Network-enabled wallet and collect in-store.
The tool came as a collaboration between energyKitchen’s Oliver Grugger and developers from local software development company Puzzle ITC.
An alpha version of the new Lightning desktop app has been released. The application includes a redesigned and optimized backend for light clients, as well as a simplified interface for users with little to no cryptocurrency experience.
Lead application developer at Lightning Labs Tankred Hase joined the company in January 2018 and was assigned to oversee the app’s redesign. Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine, Hase explains that the application preceding the current design was very much a prototype and built before his time with the company.
Spark is a web-based GUI wallet with built-in Electrum software designed for speed, safety and simplicity that utilizes Blockstream’s Lightning implementation c-lightning as its backend. The platform allows for easy spending and receiving of bitcoins over the Lightning Network, which is renowned for its payment speeds. Users can also run their own Bitcoin-based nodes, c-lightning nodes and Spark GUIs in a completely trustless environment.
Independent developer Nadav Ivgi is the developer behind the project. Also an ambassador at the Tel Aviv Bitcoin Embassy and the founder of Bitrated, a company that seeks to bring stronger consumer protection to blockchain applications, Ivgi developed Spark through a sponsorship from blockchain development company Blockstream.
CoinGate, a bitcoin payment processor, has launched bitcoin Lightning Network payments on its platform, bringing the option to accept Lightning payments to its 4,000 clients.
The Lithuanian company enables merchants to accept bitcoin payments for their products or services. Merchants can keep the funds in bitcoin or CoinGate will convert those funds to Euros or U.S. dollars for customers who want to avoid dealing with bitcoin’s volatility.
In a blog post announcing the launch of Lightning on its mainnet, CoinGate explained that shoppers can pay their affiliated merchants with Bitcoin’s on-chain transactions (a conventional way) or select the option to pay through the Lightning Network, a second-layer solution that works on top of Bitcoin.
As the birthplace of the Chaos Computer Club, the hometown of the mother of all hackerspaces, and what many of the world’s leading privacy activists consider to be a bit of a safe haven, Berlin may be the the strongest center in the world for hacker culture.
Maybe that’s what makes the German capital a fertile breeding ground for the ongoing series of Lightning Hackdays (stylized as #LightningHackday). Introduced earlier this year, the series continues to grow, with the third event taking place last weekend.
The team behind Lightning Ramp, a system that provides customers with faster bitcoin payments, has joined forces with Casa, a “be-your-own-bank” product that provides users with a multi-signature, multi-hardware device and multi-location wallet designed, to offer top-notch security against attacks and theft. Together, both ventures are working to create the Casa Lightning Node, a platform designed to solve many problems associated with Lightning Ramp.
The Lightning Network for Bitcoin became bigger than any time in history this month as capacity reached 100 BTC ($ 730,000) in a new first.
Data from monitoring resource 1ML confirms the milestone, which caps an extraordinary period of growth for Lightning over the summer months.
Currently, 3350 nodes and over 12,000 channels contribute to a total network capacity of 101.7 BTC.
The node count has increased 11 percent in the past 30 days, with capacity and number of channels expanding 4 percent and 7 percent respectively.
In order to make payments on the lightning network — Bitcoin’s second layer solution for instant and cheap transactions — users must first fund lightning channels. This process, however, creates a slight disconnect between lightning users and on-chain users. Lightning users can pay lightning users, and on-chain users can pay on-chain users, but they can’t pay one another directly.
To solve this, “Submarine Swaps” allow users to make trustless transactions between lightning addresses and on-chain addresses in either direction. The technology could be a game changer for both Bitcoin lightning and mainnet users, as it would remove the transaction barriers between them.
Bitcoinist spoke with Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill, one of the first companies to integrate near-zero fee lightning network payments for its mobile phone top-up service.
Bitcoinist caught up with Sergey Kotliar, CEO of a cryptocurrency cellphone top-up company called Bitrefill, who recently began selling gift vouchers for Amazon and other brands — effectively opening up Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) payments to almost any item.
Bitrefill was one of the first companies to embrace this bleeding edge technology with its promise of near-zero fees and instant payments built on Bitcoin’s ‘second layer.’ Lightning Network has been getting some attention as of late for its impressive growth in recent months.
The Lightning Network, the second-layer solution designed to make quick, cheap and easy Bitcoin payments, is maturing. But widespread adoption, still a long way off, will require plenty more participants. An ecosystem of new apps is one way to get there.
“Lightning is a promising technology, but right now, very few people are fluent with it,” Chaincode Labs engineer James O’Beirne told Bitcoin Magazine.
A new way to trade bitcoin and digital currencies is now in the books. SparkSwap is the first crypto exchange to be built on the Lightning Network. It allows users to trade both bitcoin and altcoins in seconds without depositing assets with a third party.
In a blog post, SparkSwap founder Trey Griffith said, “You can trade between different blockchains (currently Bitcoin and Litecoin, with others coming soon), with trades settling in about a second — a transaction time comparable to some of the leading centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
The Lightning Network active on the Bitcoin mainnet has passed 3000 nodes with capacity for almost 100 BTC in August.
Data from monitoring resource 1ml.com confirms that network capacity increased 85 percent in the past thirty days, bringing mainnet Lightning’s total funds accommodation to 97 BTC ($ 628,000).
Lightning originally debuted around the start of 2018 in its mainnet form, with growth accelerating through Q2.
In May, Twitter commentator Kevin Rooke notes, capacity remained comparatively low at just 18 BTC before a dramatic increase began in July.
BTC supporters were elated to discover recently that the Lightning Network’s (LN) capacity had spiked by 216 percent in just one day. Some individuals suspected the Build on Bitcoin conference had sparked more LN interest. However, onlookers have found the spike was due to a single node created by the owner of Shitcoin.com. According to LN explorers, the node holds more than 49 percent of the Lightning Network’s total funds.
Also read: Study Finds Cryptocurrency Rebalance Portfolios Outperform ‘Hodling’
Digital assets industry newsletter Diar.co has poured cold water on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, claiming low transaction success rates and issues with node dominance.
In its latest issue June 25, the weekly publication identified statistics about the current state of Lightning, highlighting problems for which the likelihood of improvement remains “unclear.”
“Nodes are up by 8600% and the Bitcoin funds on the network are up by 3600% from the start of the year. It’s less clear, however, whether the concentration of capacity amongst the largest nodes will improve with more adoption,” Diar writes.
The week of June 25 marked a new array of firsts for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network with acceptance rising and all three of its implementations entering beta.
The product of intense development, c-lightning, lightning network daemon (lnd) and Eclair formally entered beta release Monday.
Commenting on the milestone, c-lightning developer Blockstream said hinted the technology would now become more straightforward for end users – a key aspect in driving acceptance.
“It migrates away from the protocol used while designing the specification and toward a new architecture that is modular and extensible, to better adapt to your needs and your infrastructure,” a blog post explains.
![‘Lightning Definitely Has Tradeoffs,’ – Bitrefill CEO, Sergej Kotliar [Interview]](http://digitalmoneytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/lPDJ3UWp_400x400.jpg)
