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Since the project launched a little over six months ago, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) has roughly $ 5.9 million or 558 BTC locked into the system. At the rate WBTC’s token contract is climbing, the project is close to surpassing the Lightning Network’s capacity in the near future.
Also read: The ”Wrapped Bitcoin” Project Has Now Officially Launched on Ethereum
The Lightning Network, the touted scaling solution for the BTC chain, has recently seen its capacity decrease significantly and the beta project is still best suited for a cliche of technically savvy users. Now according to an analysis by Bitmex Research, the Lightning Network’s nodes have taken 2.2 BTC in “justice transactions” even though the connections might not be dishonest.
Also read: Looking Beyond the Lightning Network Hype: Everyday Users Experience Issues
The payments feature will facilitate in-store or online purchases at blue chip retailers including Starbucks, Whole Foods, AMC, Home Depot, and Southwest Airlines.
CoinDesk
The popular wallet service Electrum is soon to add official support for bitcoin’s lightning network, its founder has told CoinDesk.
CoinDesk
Casa’s new wallet aims to help aspiring cypherpunks graduate from getting their first bitcoin to running their own lightning node.
CoinDesk
Remember that layer two scaling solution they promised for Bitcoin back in the day? Does anyone know what happened to it? It feels like we’ve been waiting for a finished Lightning Network longer than Mt. Gox victims have been awaiting restitution. For now, Lightning is accessible to users with the skills to navigate its quirks and complexities, but for beginners, LN can be bewildering – and its challenges don’t end there.
Also read: Bitcoin Trades for a Premium in Hong Kong During Protests
The first protocol for issuing tokens via bitcoin’s lightning network is aimed to rival ethereum’s ERC-20. But that’s a tall order.
CoinDesk
“The Eye of Sauron casts its gaze upon the Lightning Network.”
This is how Lightning Labs CTO Olaoluwa Osuntokun (aka, roasbeef) has heralded the coming of Watchtowers to the Lightning Network. Though comparing the technical feature to the demonic gaze of Tolkien’s primary antagonist sounds disconcerting, the analogy holds up on the surface: Watchtowers, as the name implies, will keep an eye on Lightning Network channels and potential bad actors.
A bar in Japan is teaming up with a locally-based lightning startup to let customers pay using the experimental payments network.
CoinDesk
About two months ago, Lightning Labs released Lightning Loop, a service that allows users to fill or empty Lightning channels without closing them, thus reducing on-chain fees. The service, developed by Lightning Labs developers Alex Bosworth and Bryan Vu, was created to help users manage their liquidity.
The Loop service, says Bosworth, is helpful for managing liquidity because “it sidesteps the liquidity problem for Lightning, which is that you can’t do flow rebalancing. If you run out of channel capacity in one direction, there’s no possibility that you can get more in a totally self contained, only-Lightning world. You need to go outside in order to rebalance.”
During the “scaling debate” before the SegWit2X user-activated soft fork (UASF), Bitcoin businesses were getting their first bitter taste of Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. They wanted change to be easier. They wanted their influence to be effective. They wanted to take shortcuts. Unfortunately for them, Bitcoin was created to resist control. Entities that seek to position themselves against Bitcoin are choosing a path of perpetual hypocrisy and frustration.
Popular Bitcoin and Lightning Network wallet BlueWallet has released a smartwatch-compatible version of their wallet app, the first attempt to bring Lightning support to the Apple hardware.
The developers announced this new app on Twitter, briefly describing some of its functionality. Giving users the same utility as BlueWallet’s mobile iteration, the new app packs plenty of use on such a small device.
I'm living in the Future 😎
Takes 5-10 seconds to prepare a lightning invoice on my watch
Immensely cool work from @bluewalletio @nvcoelho pic.twitter.com/4ftOVL7dKD
— JP [ ₿ ⚡️] (@jpthor__) May 6, 2019
Japanese startup Nayuta is releasing a lightning network implementation with a compelling new focus: bitcoin payments for the internet of things.
CoinDesk
Lightning Labs just released an alpha version of its Lightning Network wallet. The desktop application is now compatible with Bitcoin’s mainnet and it leverages Neutrino (the protocol, not the analytics company acquired by Coinbase) to give users a lightweight option to “control their own funds,” as opposed to running a full node or trusting a third party to play custodian.
“This release required a diverse skill set of protocol engineering, product development and design thinking,” Tankred Hase, a Lightning Labs application developer, told Bitcoin Magazine. “I’m lucky enough to work with such a talented team at Lightning Labs where we can bring all those perspectives together. I’m hoping this release makes Bitcoin and Lightning more accessible to new types of users.”
Crypto payment startup Moon has announced an online web browser extension that allows crypto users to make purchases on e-commerce sites like Amazon.com with Lightning Network payments, CoinDesk reported.
Once the extension has been added to a user’s browser, they will be prompted to register and integrate it with a Lightning-enabled wallet.
It should be pointed out that Amazon itself doesn’t accept bitcoin. Rather, the process begins with the user paying with crypto assets followed by a payment processor converting the assets into fiat currency and settling with the merchant.
Bitcoin spenders can use the lightning network to shop at e-commerce sites like Amazon, thanks to a new browser extension.
CoinDesk
With $ 1.5 million in seed funding secured, Bolt Labs wants to bring privacy features to the lightning network and other blockchain solutions.
CoinDesk
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.
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 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.”
