fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Altcoin News: Lightning Network Bandwidth on Bitcoin Blockchain Topped 1,000 BTC
By: Marko Vidrih
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Crypto, Cryptocurrency

Altcoin News: Lightning Network Bandwidth on Bitcoin Blockchain Topped 1,000 BTC

The bandwidth capacity of the Lightning Network in the Bitcoin blockchain exceeded 1,000 BTC, an increase of more than 54% over the last month.

On March 15, 2018, Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark announced one of the first official beta versions of the Lightning Network (LN). Then the decision was supported by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Tesla and SpaceX investor Bill Lee and other prominent members of the cryptocurrency community.

A year later, according to the 1ML.com resource, LN ‘s throughput was 1056.83 BTC (over $4.2 million). The network bandwidth, which reached 601 BTC in late January, has grown by more than 54% in the last 30 days only. At the same time, the number of LN channels increased by more than 47% last month, reaching 39,222 channels. The number of network nodes also increased by 17.89% — up to 7,381 over the same period.

In the field of the actual adoption of LN, there has also been a considerable success. Jack Dorsey praised the decision on scaling, noting that it is only a matter of time when it will be implemented in his social network. Earlier, he also supported the initiative of the Torch Lightning Network, which later managed to reach Iran despite sanctions.

In addition, the other day it became known that Bitfury was bringing LN to the blockchain platform for processing HadePay payments, and at the beginning of the month, the Lightning Network transaction was sent for the first time by direct radio communication.

Author: Marko Vidrih
Announcement: Crypto Futures API Release
Tags: Lightning Network, Suredbits, Bitcoin, Futures Trading, Crypto Data

Today we are excited to release our new Crypto Futures API. This new service will enable users to query for Futures contracts data using our standard channels: “Tickers”, “Trades” and “Books”. Our initial release will have Bitmex and Kraken exchanges.

We will offer support for the following Futures trading contracts at launch:

For the Bitmex exchange:

BTC to USD — Perpetual, Quarterly and Biquarterly

ETH to USD — Perpetual

ETH to BTC — Quarterly

For the Kraken exchange:

BTC to USD — Monthly, Quarterly and Perpetual

ETH to USD — Monthly, Quarterly and Perpetual

Futures contracts are some of the most interesting and valuable instruments for traders and drive significant market activity. With today’s announcement, we are providing a data feed view into roughly over $1 billion in average daily trading volume.

All of our API services are built using Lightning technology and the Lightning Network. The API is currently available on Bitcoin’s mainnet. You can connect to our Lightning node at the url:

038bdb5538a4e415c42f8fb09750729752c1a1800d321f4bb056a9f582569fbf8e@ln.suredbits.com

To learn more about how our Lightning APIs work please visit our API documentation or checkout our new websocket playground to start exploring right away.

You can also watch our video series that provides a walkthrough of how our Lightning application for APIs works:

1. Creating a market data subscription

2. Refilling your market data subscription

3. Receiving a refund for your market data subscription

With the addition of Crypto Futures, we now offer data feeds for Crypto Exchange currencies, the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA).

If you’re interested in chatting more about Lightning Network technology or if you just want to talk about crypto in general, you can find us on Twitter @Suredbits or join our Suredbits Slack community.

Some additional reading you may find of interest:
Introducing Lightning Hood Game Studio!
Tags: Gaming, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

Click Here to Go Directly to the Site

Our Mission

As Bitcoin and Lightning Network enthusiasts, we value both Privacy and Financial Sovereignty as fundamental rights for a free society. Our mission for the Lightning Hood Game Studio is to provide a place for gamers and developers to come build, collaborate and have fun using micro-payments in gaming. We hope LH Game Studio will help to spur new ideas and drive the next wave of gaming in an ever changing world!

Our site curates and categorizes all Lightning based games under one roof so gamers can easily discover new games to play. Users will be able to rate, comment on and chat about the games they love to play.

Each game added to our site will receive its own unique page where details such as the developer and description of the game will be provided along with any images or videos of the game. We even intend to embed twitch streams of gamers who frequently live stream themselves playing each respective game so viewers can easily tune-in. Lastly, we’ve made it so that all games are playable on their respective page within in our site so users can easily experience the amazing games developers are creating.

Twitch

A big part of our inspiration behind creating this site is fostering a strong gaming community around Bitcoin and Lightning based game projects. We feel that Twitch is a big part of making that happen and we are looking to highlight and feature Twitch streamers who love to play Lightning based games. If you are a Twitch streamer please contact us via twitter (@GamestudioLh) or email (contact@lhgamestudio.com) we would love to add your stream to our dedicated Twitch page.

Developer Partnerships

Another major focus for us with the creation of this website is to build relationships with developers in the community. We are actively looking for developers we can work with and collaborate with on new Lightning based games, as well as provide support services such as marketing and advertising and hosting services. Please contact us via twitter (@GamestudioLh) or email (contact@lhgamestudio.com) we would love to chat with you about how we can work together.

Store (Coming Soon)

We plan to launch a store in the near future where we plan on selling Lightning vouchers for people who want to play games on our site. We are also exploring the possibility of selling games or access codes to games directly on our site to customers. We are also open to working with game developers that want to create merchandise for their games and sell it through our site.

Connect With Us

For any questions or inquires don’t hesitate to reach out. We hope you’ll enjoy getting your game on at https://lhgamestudio.com/

Twitter (@GamestudioLh) | Email (contact@lhgamestudio.com)
Setting Up a Bitcoin+Lightning Network Test Environment
By: David Michael
Tags: Lnd, Docker, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

Mystery Lightning on Mars :)

This article shows how to get a Bitcoin+LND node up in a jiff — inspired by Michael Goldstein’s post.

Blackbox

Setting up blockchain nodes require that you make a bunch of little decisions to get a node standing. These include decisions about where data is stored, how the daemons are parameterized, how to gauge service health, and how to keep nodes on versions that make sense.

The goal of the Blackbox project is to provide a framework to help developers spin up nodes quickly, in flexible configurations, so that they can focus on that app that is going to win them the Hackathon next week.

I hope that the brevity of the commands in this article convince you, dear searcher, to give Blackbox a try.

Install Blackbox

Prerequisites. Blackbox uses Docker and Docker Compose under the hood. If you are using macOS, these can be installed in Docker Desktop for Mac. Just get the latest version.

Blackbox works on macOS and Linux. To install on macOS with Homebrew, execute the following:

$ brew install crypdex/blackbox/blackboxd

Configure for Bitcoin+LND

Blackbox uses a YAML file to configure the stack — more specifically, it uses a small superset of Docker Compose version 3.7.

By convention, this file is ~/.blackbox/blackbox.yml . To create a Bitcoin+LND stack, simply specify the following in a file at that location.

version: "3.7"

services:

lnd_bitcoin:

To see what that does you can say

$ blackboxd info

Chances are that running that command told you that you are missing some variables that need to be set. Let’s do that now.

Parameterize Bitcoin+LND

We parameterize the node by placing some variables in our shell’s environment. This can be done in you ~/.bash_profile or in ~/.env if you would prefer.

At a bare minimum you need DATA_DIR to tell Blackbox where all the chain data is going to be stored. This can be anywhere, but I typically recommend you put this data in an external SSD.

DATA_DIR=/mnt/data BITCOIN_RPCUSER=<alibaba>

BITCOIN_RPCPASS=<opensesame>

By default, this stack is on mainnet . However, you can spin it up in either testnet or regtest by adding this to the .env .

BITCOIN_NETWORK=regtest

Spin er up!

Now that everything is parameterized, lets boot

blackboxd start

Thats it. Now we can tail the logs to see what’s up

blackboxd logs

So you want CLIs?

Now that you node is up and syncing, you will likely want to communicate with them. To do this, install the binary wrappers. These give you access to the full command line running in the nodes’s container.

$ blackboxd bin install bitcoin-cli lncli-bitcoin

Now you can make calls as you normally would

$ bitcoin-cli getnetworkinfo

$ lncli-bitcoin wallet create

Wrapping Up

There is a whole lot more you can do with Blackbox. In fact, setting up a Litecoin+LND node is just as trival. I’ll show that in detail in the next article.
Why am I in Bitcoin?
Tags: Lightning Network, Economics, Bitcoin, Engineering, Cypherpunk

I firmly believe that human beings are potential creators, that we are always moving and achieving small conquests, there is not one goal but many, every achievement, every effort, every physical, emotional and / or mental energy wear lead us to achieve these goals that become part of our history, our life.

I decided to study about computer systems because when I wrote my first code I realized that everything is possible, that you can be a creator, be an artist in what you like to do and bring it to many people in the world and in turn they also have the possibility to share their creations with you, be it a doctor, a musician, a dentist…, which means that we are all connected, that we are all a system, just like the human body, which cannot function if any of its organs is missing, so humanity.

And when I discovered Bitcoin (thanks to a friend who told me about it) and started my journey into the depths of the rabbit hole, I realized that the above mentioned analogy was in front of me and that I was here, and I thought: “woooooooow this is the creation of many powerful minds together that merged for a single purpose, to bring freedom to humanity”.

I do not want to extend so much this text, I just want to show the basis of what has me here, the way I see this creation so lofty and with infinite possibilities that will change the world forever and you know, I feel blessed for it, to be here, to share at least with one person what Bitcoin is, what it represents and above all to help him in what I know thanks to what I have learned and I learn every day, with that I am sure that the connection will begin and expand until it reaches the last human being on the entire planet earth.
Two Good News for Bitcoin: Weiss Ratings Increase, BTC Payment via Lightning at ATM Nearly Possible
By: Crypto Base Scanner
Tags: Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Finance, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

There seem to be non-stop developments for Bitcoin as the Lightning Network pushes forward the resolution of certain issues such as scalability and expensive transfer fees. On March 31, a public demonstration of Bitcoin payment has been made by Felix Weiss during the Lightning Hackday in Hong Kong.

As Weiss claims, purchasing Bitcoin via the Lightning network through an ATM could not be considered perfect since there still remains to be a lot of bugs in the process. However, the mere fact that a transaction such as this has been accomplished is already a cause for a little celebration as it proves the conceptual possibility of making the transfer between two mobile wallets through an automated teller machine.

As the Lightning Network boosts its development, it also consequentially improves Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency that can be adopted by the masses. On March 27, Weiss Crypto Ratings, an independent ratings agency, released a list of some of the best digital currencies in terms of technology, adoption, investor risk and reward, and adoption.

The report by Weiss Cryptocurrency Outlook which is entitled “Dark Shadows with a Bright Future” now places Bitcoin on the third spot with XRP on the second and EOS on the first. Bitcoin has been given a grade of A for having an excellent technology that is great for adoption.

Considering overall categories, however, Bitcoin only gets a B- grade which is still a significant improvement from last year. This development comes with the successful rollout of the Lightning Network which essentially makes Bitcoin a “popular store of value for savers and investors.”

The report further highlights Bitcoin as the proven leader in adoption which is a safe currency even in times of economic disruption and political instability.

Originally posted on our blog: https://blog.cryptobasescanner.com/weiss-ratings-increase-btc-payment-via-lightning-at-atm
World’s first lightning-enabled Bitcoin ATM launched by Felix Weis at Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong
Tags: Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Adoption, Bitcoin Atm Machine, Blockchain

World’s first lightning-enabled Bitcoin ATM launched by Felix Weis at Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong Bitcoinik Follow Apr 1, 2019 · 1 min read

Lightning Network enabled Bitcoin payment ATM is created first time in history by a bitcoin developer Felix Weis at Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong on Lightning Hack Day on 31 March 2019.

Felix Weis described the working of Lightning-enabled Bitcoin ATM by purchasing the Bitcoin through the ATM off the chain by cash.

This ATM has two options, one for on-chain and second is for off-chain (Lightning Network).

You can fund your bitcoin lightning wallet through this ATM by purchasing Bitcoins from Cash.

This ATM shows how the lightning network is easy to use, fast and more scalable.

Lightning Network capacity crossed the 1000 BTC in just one year.

Lightning nodes are increasing day to day by which lightning network is growing worldwide.

Bitcoin developers are working hard for the implementation and mass adoption of the lightning network throughout the world for the use in regular payments by people.

Lightning Network where transactions occurred off the chain is the perfect solution for bitcoin scaling and mass adoption.

Lightning transactions are very fast and cheap, the lightning network can handle millions of transactions per second.

Last week, Lightning labs announced the launch of a new feature on lightning known as the lightning loop.

Also Read: What is Lightning Network? How it works?
Bitrefill USD Accounts are here
Tags: Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Fintech

Our new USD and EUR Accounts allows funding directly with Bitcoin, letting you to take advantage of the most used currencies's stability.

USD denominated accounts are practical to live on crypto

An ever increasing number of Bitrefill customers have been requesting USD denominated prepaid balances for their Bitrefill Accounts, after their positive experiences with the Balance Cards. That is Bitrefill’s own gift cards that are denominated in USD or EUR, which can be gifted to anyone (even nocoiners), and used from anywhere in the world to purchase any of our gift cards or mobile refills.

If you use Crypto for your daily expenses, likely you already understand the value and utility in keeping some balance in the strongest fiat currencies to avoid the volatility of cryptocurrency in the short term, and the rampant currency devaluation of your own national currency.

You probably also have a good grasp on the convenience of keeping track of expenses, online purchases, paying bills, etc. in the more familiar and stable USD unit of account.

USD accounts are for people who actually live on crypto, and keep a weekly or monthly balance with Bitrefill for recurring mobile refill and gift card purchases, as you need them. Bitcoin is the best payment rail, and USD the (current) best measure unit.

We still have Balance cards so you can give the gift of Bitrefill to other users or relatives that don't handle crypto yet, but now we have USD and EUR accounts with direct Bitcoin topup for more convenience.

This is how our new USD account balances will work

First, you’ll need to create an account. All it takes is an email, and a few seconds of your time. Once you have it, you’ll need to login, and then top-up your account with some Bitcoin (onchain or Lightning).

If you’re an existing Bitrefill account holder, it will be familiar to you.

When you top-up your account with Bitcoin like you normally would, you’ll be given the option to buy credit in USD instead, at a real-time exchange rate.

After 1 confirmation (or instantly with Lightning) the balance will be available. At the shopping time, simply select USD (or EUR) account balance as your payment method during checkout.

You’ll still be able to earn sats back Rewards on your purchases, just like if you were using satoshis.

This means that no matter what Bitcoin’s price decides to do, your purchasing power will be stable in the short/mid term, and you will be able to separate the moment of locking USD value with the moment of gift card shopping.

Sign up for an account today to get started, or learn more here
What We’re Building: Lightning Development Kit
By: Square Crypto
Tags: Bitcoin, Lightning Network

For bitcoin to become a widely used global currency — one that can’t be stopped, tampered with, or rigged in anyone’s favor — improvements to bitcoin’s UX, security, privacy, and scaling are required.

In open-source development, developers usually choose their own projects. Yet, because we are a consolidated team of open-source developers, we are in a strong position to coordinate on major projects that individuals may not have the time or resources to tackle.

With that in mind, we used the following criteria to ask ourselves what we should build to accelerate bitcoin adoption:

Will the project have an outsized impact on bitcoin, particularly non-custodial bitcoin?

Is the project meeting an underfunded need of the ecosystem that doesn’t have a clear business model?

Can this become a self-sustaining open-source project that will attract developers worldwide?

We spoke with dozens of wallet developers. What we heard was a desire for flexibility when integrating Lightning. Wallets and applications require different key store and backup mechanisms, security approaches, UX tradeoffs, and more. That means the solution is building for more wallets, not fewer.

So rather than create a standalone Lightning node, we’re building a Lightning Development Kit (LDK) that gives wallet and application developers a convenient way to create custom experiences. LDK will include an API, language bindings, demo apps, and anything else that makes integrating Lightning easy, safe, and configurable. The API is based on the Rust-Lightning project, which offers clean interfaces and minimal system dependencies. Rust is also among the safest systems languages, one that will attract developers who can sustain LDK independently of us.

Here’s just some of what LDK will simplify:

Adding Lightning capabilities to existing bitcoin wallets — no need to create a separate wallet just for Lightning.

Supporting multi-device, multi-application access to a single wallet.

Allowing wallets to make UX/security/privacy tradeoffs such as external transaction signing and customizing their state backup to a cloud service.

Today’s Lightning infrastructure is incomplete without features like these. Even though that makes LDK a big project, that’s also what makes it right for Square Crypto. And with the support of developers like Acinq, Blockstream, Lightning Labs, and open-source developers everywhere, it’s only a matter of time until instant, low-fee bitcoin payments are as common as cash used to be.
XSN DEX Update V92, API Release, & More
By: Stakenet Team
Tags: Lightning Network, Masternodes, Litecoin, Bitcoin, Xsn New

DEX API PUBLIC RELEASE

We are proud to announce the release of our DEX API. Using this public repo developers will have all the tools to setup automated systems from trading bots, market makers, arbitrage bots and more. Having a sound and reliable api is an important step for our DEX allowing for a strong developer/trading community and collaboration with strategic partners moving forward.

V92 Light Wallet

We are now on V92 of our light wallet! V92 has added trading view (w/ full featured toolkit), stabilization of lightning channels, added checks avoiding “swap failures”, UX improvements and much more. We want to thank our community testers for the continuous feedback in helping us get the wallet to its current state and ready for launch.

X9 Pitch Deck

As we approach launch X9 is preparing a pitch deck to allow for on boarding of institutional investors and VC’s. Allowing for private equity investment into the project will help attract a dynamic range of partners, investors and collaborators that may have otherwise been difficult to reach. We are working with a premiere law firm that has extensive experience with international clients, and large scale VC investment. If you know of any parties who might be a good fit for this, join our community/ discord and let us know.

If anyone wants to preview our DEX feel free to reach out to our mods in Discord to join our LN testing channels and get involved. In the meantime you can also follow us on Twitter, or join our Telegram to stay up to date on the latest news.
Making A Lightning Web App: Part 1
By: William O'Beirne
Tags: React, Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Typescript, Tutorial

If you’ve been following Bitcoin, you’ve probably heard of the Lightning network: a layer 2 solution to the on-chain scaling problems that Bitcoin faces that allows for near-instantaneous payments with extremely low fees.

The Lightning network has caught fire over the last year, with over 8,000 nodes online and over 1,000 BTC in public channels. We’ve also seen a ton of cool applications pop up that take advantage of Lightning’s micropayments.

Whether it’s paying for the latest Y’alls post, making pixel-per-sat doodles on Satoshis.place, or taking a chance to win big on Lightning Spin, these have all been exciting examples of what we can do with the Lightning network.

But even so, it hasn’t been easy to get started as a developer to get started with making a Lightning-powered web app of your own. So that’s why I’m putting together this 5-part series on how to make a Lightning app, using the latest industry-standard tech.

Let’s take an overview of what we’ll be using:

Prerequisites

Node ≥ 8 for package management and development

An LND node with some channels open

If you haven’t yet setup a node, I recommend following Pierre Rochard’s Lightning Node guide, or downloading the Lightning app from Lightning Labs. These make getting started a breeze.

If you’re a more advanced user and aren’t afraid of a little setup, you can run a local simulated network to be able to test multi-user behavior without having to use real bitcoin or wait for block confirmations.

The Stack

To build our Lightning app, we’ll be using the following technology:

Express for our webserver

React + Webpack + Bootstrap for our frontend

TypeScript for all of our code

If you’re already familiar with Javascript but not Typescript, don’t be concerned about continuing on. It’s not an entirely new language, and it’s easy to get into. And hopefully by the end of these tutorials, you’ll see how much easier it is to develop with compiler-checked code!

If you’re not familiar with React or Express, I suggest taking just a little bit of time to brush up on them before moving on, as we won’t be covering the basics. But it shouldn’t be difficult to follow along, even if you’re fairly new.
Lightning Network Becomes More Centralized, Researchers Say
By: Marko Vidrih
Tags: Lightning Network, Cryptocurrency News, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Lightning Network Becomes More Centralized, Researchers Say

The Lightning Network (LN) is becoming more centralized and vulnerable to attacks, says a new research paper.

LN is a payment network that allows for fast and cheap transactions, which was presented as a potential solution to the scalability problem of Bitcoin.

Researchers Jian-Hun Lin, Kevin Primikerio, Tiziano Skvartini, Christian Decker and Claudio J. Tessone in their article concluded that the wealth in the Lightning network is “unevenly distributed” since a smaller part of the nodes gradually accumulate a large share of Bitcoins.

For example, researchers found that 10% of nodes control 80% of the Lightning network. If most of the bitcoins are stored on several nodes, the network will become more vulnerable to attacks, and the loss of these routing nodes will be akin to gaping holes.

“The loss of hubs will lead to the breakdown of the network into many components … and the network may become the target for the so-called split attacks [splitting attacks],” the document says.

However, Christian Decker from Blockstream tweeted that this state of affairs does not bother him. In his opinion, this temporary trend towards centralization. He and other LN developers “are working to make it easier for carriers to create duplicate channels on the network.”

Author: Marko Vidrih

Featured image credit: Pixabay
Understanding the cost of trapped liquidity in the Lightning Network, Part 1
By: Peter R. Rizun
Tags: Bitcoin, Lightning Network

Yesterday, I posted a quiz on Twitter to explore the cost of liquidity trapped in a channel on the Lightning Network. In this article, we work out the answers to the quiz questions.

A) What initial channel balance minimizes Company A’s cost per payment?

To answer this question, we need to find an equation for the cost per Lightning payment as a function of the initial channel balance, Bi, and then solve for the value of Bi that minimizes that cost.

To begin, note that the expected lifetime of the channel in days (tf) and number of payments (n) (because Company A pays once per day) is

Channel lifetime: tf =n= Bi/100

It is easy to see that the cost per LN payment due to on-chain fees is just the channel setup costs ($50) divided by the number of payments over the lifetime of the channel:

Cost per LN payment due to on-chain fees: C1 = 50 / n= 50 / (Bi /100)

But there is another cost too: the interest that Company A forgoes by having its capital locked in the channel. Calculating this is a bit tricky, because Company A is not foregoing interest on the entire channel balance Bi, just the portion that still belongs to Company A. Over the lifetime of the channel, Company A holds an average balance of Bi/2 in the channel. The interest Company A then forgoes per transaction is

Cost per LN payment due to forgone interest: C2 =(Bi/2)(0.05/365)tf/n = (Bi/2)(0.05/365)

The total cost per payment is the sum of both terms (C1+C2):

Total cost per LN payment: C =50/(Bi/100) + (Bi/2)(0.05/365)

To find the value of Bi that minimizes that cost, we take the derivative with respect to Bi, set it to zero, and solve for Bi.

dC/dBi = -5000/Bi² + (0.05/365)/2 = 0

Solving for Bi yields

Bi = Sqrt[5000 / ((0.05/365)/2)] = $8544

The answer to Part (A) is:

The initial channel balance that minimizes Company A’s cost is $8544.

B) How many days until the channel balance has been transferred to Company B?

This question is trivial now that we’ve solved Part (A). We just divide the initial channel balance by the dollars spent per day:

tf = Bi/100 = 8544/100 = 85.44 days

The channel lasts 85.44 days before its entire balance has been transferred to Company B.

C) Company B is currently paying interest on a line-of-credit at 10%. What discount could Company B give to Company A if Company A settled each day using BCH instead? Assume BCH fees are small enough to be negligible.

To solve this question, note that the average balance held in the channel by Company B is also Bi/2. The total amount of interest that Company B could have saved on its line-of-credit if the payments from Company A weren’t locked in the channel is:

Total interest lost by Company B: (8544/2)(0.10/365)(85.44) = $100

Company B could discount each payment by $100 / 85.44 = $1.17 if Company A paid in BCH instead.

Why this matters

Capital trapped in a LN channel adds a real cost for both payer and payee. Both payer and payee could improve the profitability of their businesses if they used a low-friction digital cash such as Bitcoin BCH instead.
A practical example: Privacy and the Lightning Network
By: Leo Weese 獅 草地
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

Assuming we have a small amount of money in a publicly known address A. We want to move this money to our own wallet in a way that makes it hard for any observer to link the two.

Unrelated: one of the bridges of Koenigsberg (today Kaliningrad)

The idea:

As we already have a lightning wallet that we regularly use to buy food and drinks, why not move the funds into this wallet? The node associated with our wallet has plenty of inbound liquidity, and while the total capacity of the node is known (~US$1700), the actual balance of our node is not.

Can we cost-efficiently move funds into this wallet through a newly created node?

The experiment:

We spin up a Lightning node and deposit the funds from our address A into it. We open a channel with a random but well connected node in the network (not our own), and invoice ourselves the funds off-chain. The funds are now in our lightning wallet without an observer being able to easily make that connection.

The math:

We start with 317100 Satoshi in our wallet.

Transaction A: On-chain transaction to our new Lightning wallet. Cost: 351 Satoshi

Transaction B: Opening a channel with the network. Cost: 3758 Satoshi

Transaction C: Off-chain transaction. Cost: 1.602 Satoshi

Transaction D: Off-chain transaction. Cost: 1.601 Satoshi

Transaction E: Off-chain transaction. Cost: 1.2 Satoshi

Transaction F: Off-chain transaction. Cost: 1.008 Satoshi

Transaction G: Off-chain transaction. Cost: 1 Satoshi

Transaction H: Off-chain transaction. Cost: 1 Satoshi

In total we now have 304,900 Satoshi in our spending wallet at a transaction cost of 9010 Satoshi. This is a transaction cost of 2.84% on a relatively small payment of ~US$12.7

We still have 3,189 Satoshi in our temporary Lightning wallet that we cannot move out as it would push us below the dust limit. Including those the transaction fee was closer to 3.85%

The caveat:

Given how the Lightning network works today, almost all nodes regularly publicly broadcast their channel states, which makes it at least in theory possible for somebody to follow our payments. To prevent this we would have needed to use private channels.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network now on Apple Watch
By: Robert Hoogendoorn
Tags: Apple Watch, Lightning Network, Bluewallet, Payments, Bitcoin

Apple Watch-owners can now receive Bitcoin’s experimental lightning payments thanks to a QR code on their smartwatch. BlueWallet launched their app for iOS and it incorporates an Apple Watch-functionality. With a few taps on their watch, people can generate a QR code to receive bitcoin payments using the super fast lightning network.

Bluewallet suggests the app is mainly for an easy and fast method to receive bitcoin. Add a description, say how much you want to receive, and the app creates a QR code. This works on your phone and on your watch.

“Sometimes the convenience of just [receiving bitcoin] with two taps from your wrist can be a relevant user experience, specially on the go or if you need to be fast”, said UX engineer Nuno Coulho to Coindesk. The smartwatch app is just a first phase. If people like the functionality, BlueWallet will spend more time on updates and extra features.

Just like the Bitcoin’s lightning network, the smartwatch is still experimental. The lightning network is an extra layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain that allows user to transfer bitcoin against very low transaction costs. In recent months the lightning network has been used in many ways to showcase its usability and low costs.

In December a piece of art was sold for the lowest possible amount. On the bitcoin network the lowest possible amount is 1 satoshi, but thanks to the lightning network 1 satoshi can be divided by one thousand. The piece of art was sold for $0.000000037. The lightning network also brings other interesting ways to transfer money into play. In March a Canadian entrepreneur managed to send a bitcoin invoice using radio waves.
Great Divergence. Why Bitcoin can grow up to $15,000 this year
By: Andrey Mastykin
Tags: Transactions, Investing, Lightning Network, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Great Divergence. Why Bitcoin can grow up to $15,000 this year

Three months ago I wrote that the growth of BTC is very probable. My suggestion was based on pure fundamental analysis. Fundamentals and market sentiment were perfect for the beginning of long-term up-trend. Current analysis of fundamentals tells us about a very probable middle-term prolongation of growth up to $10,000-$15,000.

Bitcoin transactions level is near historical record

One of the basic principles of Bitcoin fundamentals is network activity. The idea is very simple — as more people use cryptocurrency, as higher its value. If to take into account this approach we see a huge divergence between the current price of BTC and possible price. In 2017 with everyday transactions up to 450,000, we had a price up to $19,000–20,000. Today, with a similar amount of transactions per day we have just near $5,700.

Of course, in 2017 we watched a huge speculative bubble, and critics can note fairly that it was not a normal market condition. On the other hand, if to observe historical data, price and TPD (transactions per day) are correlating constantly with some time gaps.

The current investment and payment infrastructure evidence that practical usage of bitcoin will grow further.

Lightning network

I’m a devoted believer in the opportunities, which give Lightning network for Bitcoin. This protocol is an elegant decision removing basic Bitcoin’ weaknesses as poor scalability and high transaction fee. I think we see just a beginning of its capacity growth after all this micropayment system can give any scalability with near-zero fees. Recent mothy data have been collected by https://1ml.com demonstrating constant growth of capacity that has already exceeded $6 mln. Most of other important metrics as the number of nodes and number of payment channels are also constantly growing.

Another huge milestone for Lightning and Bitcoin is an opportunity to make purchases in the world’s biggest online marketplace Amazon.com using bitcoin. Such option was recently launched by startup Moon and it is working in the testing mode now.

Users will be able to buy any item with a Lightning wallet or Coinbase account. It’s not necessary to remind that Amazon.com is the world’s most visited website with the monthly audience up to 2.95 bln (data by similar.web).

During the last two years, we have observed a growing acceptance of bitcoin by “traditional” financial institutions as investment giants Fidelity and Black Rock. This respected companies are together managing near $10 trillion and creating an infrastructure to let investors buy and sell bitcoin safely. This obstacle makes closer the beautiful idea of crypto enthusiasts who believe that bitcoin once can become the digital analogue of gold with multi-trillion capitalization.

Do you still believe BTC need years to come back to 2017 highs?
XSN CORE UPDATE | JAN 2021
By: Stakenet Team
Tags: Ethereum, Lightning Network, Development Updates, Cryptocurrency, Bitcon

As we head into the first month of 2021 we have exciting news and developments to share from the Stakenet ecosystem. Key developments being test builds deployed to our community with ETH integration, UX redesign and overhaul, major exchange news, partnerships and more.

ERC-20 + USDT Support

We now have Ethereum and ERC-20 (USDT) deployed to our community closed beta and in testing! This is in preparation for upcoming trading pairs BTC<>USDT and BTC<>ETH being added to the DEX.

High gas fees and traffic on the Ethereum chain have caused strong demand for near term scaling solutions as of recent. Our DEX will assist in providing users with low cost, instant trading on ETH /ERC-20 to BTC via Connext and Lightning Network.

Some key developments added to our latest builds:

Transaction signing & UI for sending/receiving ETH & USDT

Transaction fee calculations

Fixes and deployments for Win & OSX build to our testing groups

In addition, lssd now supports Connext and is on the XSN DEX mainnet hub where our team is setting up automated trading environments for our newly added ETH and ERC-20 pairs.

UX Redesign

In this promotional video, we share our latest redesign concept for our Stakenet Multi-currency Light Wallet and DEX — including the Simple Swap User Interface (SSUI). The SSUI has been designed and built to ensure that it is user friendly and enables users to trade with a single click on Layer 2. On Layer 2, you can enjoy the benefits of instant trades with virtually 0 fees and increased privacy.

A smooth UX will be important to make an easy to use and simple trading experience.

Exchanges

XSN is now live with an XSN/USDT trading pair on WhiteBit Exchange. https://whitebit.com/trade Read more about why we chose WhiteBit over other tier 2 exchanges here: https://link.medium.com/TElqIlN7Ecb

This month we will also be announcing a listing on a top tier exchange, make sure to keep an eye on socials and further exchange announcements to come.

DUCK DAO PARTNERSHIP

On our way to the DEX public launch, we are thrilled to announce our partnership with DuckDAO, a digital asset incubator that provides hand-selected crypto projects with expertise, financial resources, and marketing power needed to fast track their progress on the path to success.

Stakenet plans to work with DuckDAO as a Liquidity Provider for the DEX as well as marketing and community support.

Road Ahead

Over the next month we will have a main focus on running stress tests of our newly integrated Connext client with cross-chain BTC LN to ETH, USDT trading pairs. Also, there will be a rollout of our new UI and news on official public launch dates set for the Stakenet wallet.

Join us on Discord and follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date with our latest news and developments.
Phoenix Wallet Part 3: Backup
Tags: Bitcoin, Lightning Network

On a traditional Bitcoin wallet, backup is as simple as writing down a list of words, once and for all. It is not as simple with Lightning because backups need to be updated after each transaction. It’s also very tricky because from a protocol point of view, restoring an out-of-date backup is the same as a cheating attempt, and will result in your peer taking all your funds.

For Eclair Mobile, we came up with the idea to use Google Drive as a remote backup system, by uploading an encrypted version of the channel data every time they were updated. It worked well enough and the feature was later replicated by a few other Lightning wallets, but it also required a dependency (and an account) to a external service provider (Google). We wanted to do better.

The idea of static backups has been floating around for some time now, but they are not a silver bullet and suffer from two main drawbacks:

You need to remember what peers you have a channel with, meaning that you need to make a backup every time you create a channel. It’s an improvement, but it’s still not as good as doing a backup once and for all.

Restoring a channel will close it. It costs you money and takes time.

Our idea with Phoenix is, on top of static backups, to make our peer store a backup of our channels for us. This immediately raises two questions: (1) how would I know who my former peers were when I need to restore my wallet and (2) why would my former peer cooperate and help me restore my funds.

Phoenix’s answer for (1) is easy enough: the peer is always ACINQ. That kind of simplification is one of the advantages behind the choice to always connect to the same nodes.

Now regarding (2), ACINQ needs an incentive to cooperate. In the case of Phoenix:

ACINQ is always the funder, with a non-zero reserve, which means that ACINQ always has something at stake. From there, in order to recover its funds, ACINQ has two choices: either force-close(*), which means paying high fees (funder pays the commitment fees in unilateral close scenarii as per the LN protocol), or help users recover their channels, which could lead to earning future routing fees.

Just like the data_loss_protect feature of the LN protocol, ACINQ doesn’t have a way to tell the difference between a recovery scenario and a normal reconnection. When reconnecting and exchanging commitment number about existing channels, ACINQ will always return the last encrypted channel data. We actually plan to go one step further and make ACINQ always send its data first, preventing it from gaining any information — true or false — from Phoenix beforehand. This is an example of shifting the trust balance in favour of Phoenix.

(*) Note that if ACINQ chooses to force-close, Phoenix would still recover its money thanks to static backups.

To summarise, if you (a Phoenix user) lose your data (uninstall app, lose phone, …), just reinstall the app with the same seed, and you will instantly recover your channels and be ready to make payments. We have demonstrated this use case in our preview video.
Altcoin News: Twitter CEO Supported the Torch Lightning Network Initiative
By: Marko Vidrih
Tags: Lightning Network, Twitter, Bitcoin, Crypto, Cryptocurrency

Altcoin News: Twitter CEO Supported the Torch Lightning Network Initiative

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey unexpectedly became the hero of the media industry after joining the Lightning Network development and announced that he would never own altcoins.

On February 6th, on his Twitter account, Dorsey reaffirmed his participation in the Torch Lightning Network initiative, a relay transaction launched last month. The Bitcoin developer Matt Odell passed the baton to him, after which the payment amount reached 0.02860000 BTC (slightly less than $100).

The Lightning Torch initiative aims to raise awareness of the benefits that Lightning brings to Bitcoin users. Since its introduction last year, the technology allows you to make Bitcoin transactions, which are carried out almost instantly and cheaply. The network continues to grow rapidly — at the end of January, the bandwidth capacity of the Lightning Network in the Bitcoin blockchain increased by 15% over the month.

In another Twitter post, Dorsey said publicly that he would not own any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Earlier, the CEO of Twitter has stated several times on the forums that Bitcoin will become the “national currency” of the Internet. This perspective is somewhat contrary to the policy of Twitter, which provides a ban on all advertising related to cryptocurrency.

However, Dorsey said he “likes the idea” of micropayments on Twitter, improving the quality of the content. Moreover, Dorsey scheduled an interview with Lightning Network developer and Lightning Labs co-founder Elizabeth Stark, along with podcast presenter Stephan Livera this Saturday. It is possible that their meeting could be the beginning of cooperation and the appearance of Lightning payments on Twitter.

Another Bitcoin-friendly payment network Square, Dorsey’s project, will also be implementing a full-fledged Bitcoin wallet in the future, he added.

Author: Marko Vidrih
Twitter CEO Jack joins Bitcoin Lightning Network Project
Tags: Lightning Network, Twitter, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Lightning, Adoption

The Lightning Network, Bitcoin Second Layer Protocol community project joined by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Feb. 5.

Jack participated in the experiment of LNTrustChain named “Lightning Torch” by providing invoice of 2,860,000 sats for lightning payment and included in the series of lightning transactions chain.

What is LNTrustChain?

It is Lightning Network Transactions Chain in which a user receives the lightning transaction and passes it to the next trusted one by adding the amount of 10,000 sats to the previous transaction.

It is started by an anonymous user on Twitter having Twitter handle @hodlonaut.

The Aim of starting this experiment is to increase the use of Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) by the people throughout the world.

Bitcoin Lightning Network is a way of scaling Bitcoin in terms of transaction speed and transaction cost.

Bitcoin Lightning Network able to process millions of transaction per second (TPS) and having negligible fee.

Lightning Transaction happened Off the Chain in Second Layer Protocol.

What do you think about adoption of Bitoin Lightning Network, Please Comment below!

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Welcome to Koala Studio
By: Koala Studio
Tags: Games, Chess, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

Welcome to Koala Studio

Today we’re happy to announce the public launch of Koala Studio. Koala Studio is an online gaming platform where Lightning Network payments on Bitcoin are first-class citizens. The first game on the platform is our take on the classic game of chess — Lightning Chess.

Why Lightning Network?

We believe that the Bitcoin Lightning Network drastically reduces barriers of entry for gamers and game developers looking for a permissionless payment network that supports instant, low-cost micro-transactions.

Any game developer can now explore novel game interactions for players to exchange real value. These features can be made available for as little as 1 satoshi.

Why Lightning Chess?

Lightning Chess UI

The idea behind Lightning Chess began in a chat with Jack Mallers during the first Chaincode Labs Lightning Residency in 2018.

Jack, an avid chess player, suggested creating a version of chess which enabled players to undo moves, extend timers and even wager bets against each other for satoshis.

The idea of PvP games using Lightning-enabled features was something that we were already thinking about, so Chess felt like a good game to build as a proof of concept.

We think that what we’ve come up with, Lightning Chess, is a first step in the direction of proving that these types of interactions are a viable and exciting new use-case for digitally native money — Bitcoin.

What do I need to play?

Koala Studio Accounts UI

The Koala Studio Account system has no requirements to play. An account can be created without an email or any form of ID. An access token is provided to you which allows for authentication in multiple devices.

In an effort to keep up with the ever-growing Lightning ecosystem we chose to provide first-class integration with some of the most widely used tools, including Lightning Joule. We’ll strive to always stay at the forefront of new development advancements in the Lightning Network.

Next Steps

Lightning Chess is just the beginning. Koala Studio aims to continue developing games and infrastructure for game developers looking to enter this exciting new frontier.

Feel free to drop us a line on the Telegram Group if you want to find like-minded people to play with. If you have any suggestions about the platform or are facing issues please create a thread in our Spectrum community or reach out to us at support@koalastud.io.

If you’re in the New York, London or Hong Kong areas this week, look out for Koala Studio vouchers being distributed at conferences and meetups.