BOLT 12 And LNURL: What Is The Future For Bitcoin’s Lightning Network?

BOLT 12 and LNURL seem to accomplish the same things for users of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. But what are the technical differences?

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Lightning Speed 004: What’s The Lightning Development Initiative?

There’s no denying that 2021 was the Lightning Network’s year. What does the future hold, though? If the objective is to onboard the next billion people, the network needs work and fine-tuning. To grab the bull by the horns, The Human Rights Foundation and Strike set up three 1 BTC bounties.  The bounties will go to the first person or team to develop an anonymous Lightning tip jar, a tokenless way to peg BTC to dollars, or a privacy-focused wallet that supports some kind of Chaumian e-cash feature. In a Twitter Spaces conversation about the program, they named it The Lightning Development Initiative.  A catchy name that we’ll use from now on to refer to all of this. This fourth edition of Lightning Speed is all about the future. Let’s explore the three ideas and the new information that we have about each of them. The Lightning Development Initiative In Twitter Spaces Among the speakers were Strike’s Jack Mallers, The Human Rights Foundation’s Alex Gladstein, Bitcoin Magazine’s Christian Keroles AKA CK Snarks, and Tales From The Crypt’s Matt Odell. It took place on December 29th and Bitcoin Magazine hosted it. A Twitter user named Gigi summarized it for us. ?? A thread summarizing the Lightning Développement Initiative Space ?? 3 amazingly interesting topic related to the bounties were discussed. I'm so bullish on Lightning? it hurts. Very grateful to have these people on our side ???? let's look at my notes ?? pic.twitter.com/PRs9cohPaN — Gigi ????? (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021 Bounty #1: An Anonymous Tip Jar In our sister site Bitcoinist’s report, they described the challenge as follows: “Can you create a Lightning tip jar that doesn’t reveal any information about the parties involved? That’s the first task. How to receive completely anonymous donations. According to Bitcoin Mag, the “goal is to enable anyone to use free and open-source software (FOSS) to print a QR code that can be used for receiving Lightning payments privately. Importantly, “The QR code should not reveal the public key or IP address of the user.”  In the Lightning Development Initiative’s report, we learned that this has to do with the two competing protocols, Bolt12 and lnurl. Jack Mallers “pointed out the absolute need for interoperability on the Lightning Network and that even though lnurl might not be “optimal” right now, the market will eventually decide what open standard they prefer to use. He thinks that currently UX is a major focus for the Lightning community and we should make peace with the fact that there will be competition between solutions.” Rockstar pointed out that this debate around lnurl vs bolt12 will have huge implications for the future but that he's glad that there's now an active discussion on the matter. Jack added that contrary to the Bitcoin main chain, we can somewhat afford to fuck up on LN.. — Gigi ????? (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021 Mallers put forth another interesting idea, “contrary to the Bitcoin main chain, we can somewhat afford to f**k up on the Lightning Network. As long as the Bitcoin monetary policy is not threatened then we can freely fiddle on top of the protocol via Lightning.” BTC price chart for 01/14/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com Bounty #2: Stablecoin On Lightning Without A Token Bitcoinist described this one as: “The second challenge seems to be even more difficult, at least on a conceptual level. The HRF and Strike want a wallet that enables “anyone to “peg” an amount of bitcoin to U.S. dollars without needing an exchange or another token.” That’s right, without a centralized entity. And relying only on sats and bitcoin.” Gigi summarizes why the world needs this: “The goal is to allow people to access dollars without a single point of failure. Further down the line, as Bitcoin becomes less volatile, these people can use btc, but until then there’s massive demand for holding value in dollars. The tether market cap is proof of this.” It serve an important humanitarian use case. We need to create the foundation for this new financial system.@Chris_Stewart_5 >> maybe it can be done with DLC's? Not using a token but rather something representing price exposure (think Eurodollar system). (oracles?) The END. — Gigi ????? (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021 Bounty #3: A Chaumian E-Cash Feature First of all, Investopedia defines Chaumian e-cash as: “eCash was a digital-based system that facilitated the transfer of funds anonymously. A pioneer in cryptocurrency, its goal was to secure the privacy of individuals that use the Internet for micropayments. eCash was created by Dr. David Chaum under his company, DigiCash, in 1990.“ So, once again, anonymity is the priority. As Alex Gladstein put it when announcing the bounties, they’re “for the first open-source, non-custodial, non-KYC Lightning wallets to ship features requested by dissidents worldwide.” Also, take into consideration the words of security expert Brian Trollz, “Bitcoin without privacy is nothing but a surveillance system.” Bitcoin without privacy is nothing but a surveillance system. — Shino (@brian_trollz) January 13, 2022 What does Gigi have for us on this topic? “We need a sort of Chaumian e-cash, extremely easy to use for the Plebs and accessible. Maybe the solution is a federated  one, making it harder to regulate.” He then quotes Jack Mallers again, “There’s going to be a singular standard for the internet of money (Bitcoin). Many will compete on top of BTC so we need “interoperability to the standard.” Matt: We need to make it very easy to use because experience shows us that if it's somewhat challenging (coinjoins etcc) people won't bother to protect their privacy (goddam idiot normies ??) — Gigi ????? (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021 Conclusion: The Future Is Bright Developers, teams, companies, anyone can earn the Lighting Development Initiative’s bounties. The non-profit OpenSats will serve as the judge. They are all open for the whole year. If by the end of 2022 no one has claimed them, the money will go to the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund on January 1st. Which is fair. Especially considering they just gave 425 million Sats to these worthy organizations and individuals. For more information and details read Bitcoinist’s original report. Featured Image by Micah Tindell on Unsplash | Charts by TradingView

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Venture Capitalist Bill Gurley Takes Personal Position In Ethereum, Here’s Why

Investing in Ethereum seems to be top of mind for prominent members of the finance community. The increasing use cases of the Ethereum network have brought some significant names into its camp. The latest on the list though is venture Capitalist Bill Gurley. Gurley is a general partner at Benchmark, which is a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that is based in Menlo Park, California. Gurley has been listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List, while simultaneously being considered one of the technology’s top dealmakers. Related Reading | You Can Now Use Your .COM Domain As An Ethereum Wallet Thanks To This Integration Gurley’s latest investment interest now happens to be Ethereum. The venture capitalist revealed that he had taken a personal interest in Ether, thus leading to him taking a personal position in the digital asset, which he now owns. Gurley Swayed By Ethereum Community Venture capitalist Bill Gurley explained why he had taken a position in Ethereum. Gurley said that he had been swayed by arguments being made for ETH, thus prom timing him to take a personal position in the asset. “I have to say I was swayed by the arguments of the Ethereum crowd,” Gurley revealed. “And so, I’ve taken a personal position.” Related Reading | Ex-Goldman Exec And Real Vision Founder Puts Ethereum Value At $20,000 By March 2022 Another important point for Gurley is the commitment of the Ethereum team to the project and its community. “The party that’s involved seems to be way more pragmatic,” said Gurley. “ They seem to be more open to changes and are basically making several changes which I think will bring down fees and will be very beneficial. The developer community is clearly in the Ethereum cam.” Gurley also explained that he was not making an argument for everyone being involved in crypto. Neither did his current investments make him a maximalist in any way. ETH price breaks three-month high | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com “I think there’s a ESG (environmental, social, and governance) benefit once they move to proof of stake versus bitcoin. It seems to me to be the smarter way to play if you’re going to have crypto exposure.” Gurley clarified that his investment in Ether was a personal one and that it had nothing to do with his venture firm. Furthermore, Gurley did not disclose how much he had bought in ETH. Only that he had taken a personal position in the asset. Robinhood Is More Like A Casino Bill Gurley had some comments about Robinhood’s recent reveal. The trading company had revealed earlier that more than half of revenue had come from crypto trading. With 62% of its entire crypto trading revenue coming from the meme coin Dogecoin alone. The venture capitalist stressed that Robinhood’s current business model was not a sound one. He likened the business model of Robinhood to that of a casino rather than an investment platform. Related Reading | Deloitte Survey Shows 76% Of Finance Execs Think Physical Money Is Nearing Its End It is not clear how much Robinhood plans to focus on crypto trading on the platform. While investors can also invest in coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum on the platform, most favor investing in Dogecoin. This has led to massive growth for Robinhood. But the sustainability of this business model remains to be seen. Featured image from Nasdaq, chart from TradingView.com

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Intern for Gensler? SEC’s college traineeships start at $15 an hour

College students wishing to intern for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are in luck — the regulator has opened applications for its Scholars Program for Fall 2023. The SEC is after “student trainees” for its business and legal programs, with the business program paying between $15.09 to $28.83 per hour for the [...]

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Forget HTTP: Ethereum has a new URL standard that can’t be blocked

Web3 URLs — enabled with the launch of ERC-4804 — have made it onto Ethereum, allowing internet users to access Ethereum apps and NFTs without worrying about centralized censorship. The new Ethereum standard, titled “Web3 URL to EVM Call Message Translation,” was first proposed on Feb. 14, 2022, and was co-authored by ETHStorage founder Qi [...]

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The Urlacher Makes a Full S19k Pro 115T ASIC Miner Run on 120V

The Loki Kit by Pivotal Pleb Tech has made it easier for crypto miners to get creative and run various configurations of Bitmain S19 ASIC miners on 120V power, meaning home mining for these devices was made possible in US and other countries using this voltage. There are number of products already available using Loki […]

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