The Hottest Lightning Network Apps (Lapps) in 2019
Tags: Bitrefill, Gift Cards, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

The Path to Hyperlightningization

Lightning Network applications, also known as “lapps” are useful and fun applications that allow Bitcoiners on the Lightning Network to take advantage of its low-cost and instant transacting qualities. Lapps will play an important role in the development of Bitcoin and how it achieves scaling to accommodate more users and transactions.

Developers are preparing for this inevitable “hyperlightningization” by integrating Lightning with various utilities to demonstrate and test the latest features of the protocol.

Bitrefill has been participating on the Lightning Network since the start and began offering Lightning networking services this year to help customers and businesses onboard with less friction. Anyone can remotely open a Thor Lightning channel with us, or get BTC instantly into their Lightning wallet with Thor Turbo, and soon we will open access to our ThorAPI and Recharge payment services.

The question remains, “I’m on Lightning, now what?” You can already shop for pretty much anything with Lightning at Bitrefill.com using gift cards, but now we’ve put together a list of the hottest lapps available across the internet!

⚡ Tippin.me & Bottle.li — Social tipping made easy and instant

Think about your social media activity and the most popular and engaging posts you’ve created, then ask yourself the question “What if, instead of receiving likes as digital tokens of gratification, I was actually rewarded with some satoshis?”. That’s exactly the thought process behind Tippin.me and Bottle.li, two of the hottest Lightning tipping apps.

Maybe you’re an excellent meme artist illustrating the zeitgeist of Crypto Twitter. You can use these Lightning apps to monetize your effort and encourage support from your fans.

Tippin is specialized for Twitter and embedding a tip button, while Bottle is designed to cover multiple social networks and platforms including Reddit, Github, Twitch, YouTube, and Mixcloud. Try them out!

For other great tipping alternatives, check out CoinTippy, Lightning Tip, and NanoTip.

⚡ LnSMS & Receive SMS — Privacy-enhanced phone texting

Ever wanted to have more privacy while texting, so that your phone number doesn’t get displayed? LnSMS.world allows you to confidentially send short messages to any phone number in the world.

The interface is simple and intuitive, with a cost of 1000 Lightning sats/message. Your SMS is sent from a static number, granting a degree of privacy. But please note that the creators openly state that they keep track of your IP address and you shouldn’t do illegal stuff.

If you’re looking to quickly get a temporary phone number to receive texts, then Receive SMS will come in handy. This lapp is also developed by Kryptode, and helps you get a number from any of the 7 countries listed. It’s a great and cheap complement for LnSMS.

Also check out PayPerCall.

⚡ LNCast & Y’alls — Content monetization at the speed of Lightning

LNCast allows creators to monetize their work by taking advantage of the instant and cheap microtransaction capabilities of Lightning. It’s a great tool for content creators to change their revenue system without ads and sponsors, ushering in a new world of broadcasting sovereignty and fair trade between producers and end-users.

You can see this app in action with Marty Bent’s “Tales from the Crypt” podcast series and Josh Humphrey’s “Bottomshelf Bitcoin”. Anyone can sign up with a BTCPay server URL and their RSS feed. Unlike iTunes and Spotify, you get paid instantly and most likely won’t get deplatformed for your opinions.

Developed by Lightning Labs engineer Alex Bosworth, Y’alls is an ambitious attempt to empower writers. With instant and “unfairly cheap” microtransactions, it’s about time to disrupt creative writing and journalism by allowing content creators to publish their work on their terms, and for a price that they consider to be fair.

There’s a lot of potential in both LNCast and Y’alls, and we expect to see more advancement in content monetization lapps soon!

Check these other publishing apps as well: Lightning Publisher and File Bazaar.

⚡ ZigZag & SparkSwap — Cross-blockchain exchanges

In the future, atomic swaps and submarine swaps via Lightning will enable truly decentralized and private cross-blockchain exchanges. Until then, services like ZigZag can come in handy if you want to trade your Ethereum, Litecoin, or Dash for Lightning satoshis. The interface is even simpler to use than Shapeshift. However, there are trading limits, so you can’t be too reckless!

SparkSwap provides the world’s first implementation of atomic swaps, holds the merit of not acting like a trusted third party. It currently only operates via command line terminal and currently only supports atomic-swapping between Bitcoin and Litecoin over their respective Lightning networks.

⚡ Lightning Chess — Battle for Sats

Developed by Lightning Koala (who also brought us 2018’s sensation Satoshi’s Place), Lightning Chess is an ingenious rendition of the original one-on-one PVP blockbuster hit. If you simply want to play a game of chess with a friend, you just create an instant account (consisting of a randomly-generated number) and send your link to your opponent of choice. You can also wait for the server to automatically match you with a stranger, so you have a more unpredictable experience.

The “Lightning” part in Lightning Chess can be found in power-ups and extra features. Want to extend the amount of time that you have between moves? Regret your terrible last move which makes you lose your queen? You can simply pay some sats and give yourself more time to think and/or revert your bad choice. If you want to raise the stakes of the game, you can also place wagers as a way of making everything much more intense.

⚡ Satoshis.games & Evil Blob Monster — More Lightning games!

If Lightning Chess isn’t enough to entertain you or it doesn’t pose enough of a challenge, there’s a large collection of retro video games waiting for you on Satoshis.Games. There are three main categories of 8-bit titles that you can find: free ones which require no sign-up, Lightning ones which allow you to register with your Joule browser extension or a microtransaction of 1000 sats, or challenge games where you can earn some sats if you play well.

There are modified versions of Super Mario Bros, Flappy Bird, Bejeweled, Agar, and 1980s-style text-based adventure series. The implementations are addictive and give you small financial incentives to return every day.

Tallyco.in developer DJ Booth definitely deserves a lot of credit for creating a Bitcoin and Lightning-friendly version of Patreon, where creators retain all funds. However, his most impressive achievement is a collaboration with his 7 year-old son, Josh. Evil Blob Monster is an interesting take on the classical game of hangman, which comes with a zombie-centered story and a slightly altered mechanic.

The objective of this game is to spell out the passphrase of the evil zombie’s Bitcoin wallet before he eats you. You pick one letter at a time, and your decisions influence the outcome of your face-off: correct choices will capture one body part of your nemesis, while mistakes will regenerate a lost body part. The game features hand-drawn graphics made by Josh, and contains a charming plot.

Try more Lightning games: Hammerland, Lightning Spin, Lightning Roulette

⚡ Paid.co — Lightning e-commerce

After undergoing a basic Blockstack registration, Paid.co empowers artists, content creators, educators, and craftsmen to sell their work for satoshis on the Lightning Network. Creators get 100% of funds for transactions below the $25k threshold (anything greater is charged a 1% fee).

The interface of Paid.co is clean and minimalistic with a lot of potential to grow and cause users to migrate from Fiverr, Upwork, and Patreon — especially thanks to the lack of third-party fees and the uncensorability of Bitcoin transactions.

Also check out CoinMall, NanoPOS, Strike and WooCommerce Gateway

⚡ Pollo Feed — Lightning embedded with hardware

There is no better way to prove the instant nature of Lightning payments than to make a transaction and observe how chicken get fed a few seconds later.

The Pollo Feed concept is simple: a live webcam in a chicken coop allows you to see what the birds are currently up to. If you want to feed them, all you have to do is make a Lightning payment, causing the food dispenser to drop some delicious treats.

Careful! Pollo Feed can become quite addictive, as acknowledged by Elizabeth Stark herself during the Magical Crypto Conference.

⚡ Did we miss any of your favorite Lapps? Let us know on Twitter!