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Lightning Network Wiki Page Faces Removal for Lack of Notability

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Lightning Network Wiki Article Faces Removal for Lack of Notability

A slew of Wikipedia editors would like to delete the Lightning Network (LN) Wiki page because the subject matter does not hold notability. Wikipedia editors use notability as a test to find out if a topic warrants its own article. The LN article debate on Wikipedia is still raging as a few editors believe the subject is “dredging for mainstream press coverage” while highlighting that the article does not have reliable third-party sources.

Also Read: Mainstream Investment Vehicles Tied to Cryptocurrencies Grow Exponentially

Lightning Network Wiki Article Questioned for Notability and Sourced Content

The controversial LN scaling solution for BTC is being discussed on Wikipedia because a group of Wiki editors would like to delete the Lightning Network article for lack of notability. The discussion among Wikipedia contributors shows there’s a disagreement about the validity of the LN article. “There is a problem with notability of the subject: the citations in the article refers to self-published texts that are not acceptable for notability,” explains the editor Ladislav Mecir. “Other sources found also do not qualify as significant coverage by sources independent on the subject,” Mecir added. A few people came to the LN article’s defense and said that they think that the LN page “is sufficiently notable for WP.” “It’s fair to say that it’s one of the most important initiatives in the Bitcoin ecosystem and seems to be the only viable path for Bitcoin,” Wiki contributor ‘Jimd’ wrote.

Lightning Network Wiki Page Faces Removal for Lack of Notability

Another editor who wants to pull the entire subject from Wikipedia said he finds it difficult to take any press coverage of the LN project seriously. He further said that the ‘Bob and Carol’ explanation within the article is a better example but “still laughable.” “I’d prefer to get rid of the whole lot — Ultimately it looks like many people are having the wool pulled over their eyes by a few crooks who claim the impossible — There’s no reason for Wikipedia to get involved at all.”

Another contributor said that the subject may be best suited for a broader article on consensus-less decentralized payment systems. The editor further added that the LN project would be near the bottom of the list as the project is not “Bitcoin-specific but could be used with a multitude of systems.” During the LN article deletion debate, an editor named ‘Jtbobwaysf’ said that [Wikipedia] doesn’t “remove old dead subjects.” “They are useful from a historic perspective — Also think your suggestion of a broader article would be nice, maybe we can do that when there are some other similar networks on Ethereum, etc.,” Jtbobwaysf wrote. “Or maybe they will later all be referred to as Lightning if that becomes the common name.”

Lightning Network Wiki Page Faces Removal for Lack of Notability

Greg Maxwell: ‘LN Article Has a Fringe Chance of Removal’

After this comment, Bitcoin Core and Blockstream developer Greg Maxwell stepped into the conversation. Maxwell is well known for contributing to Wikipedia but some Wiki contributors have called him an editor who “regularly makes personal attacks.” Maxwell believes the LN article should be kept and told Jtbobwaysf that “Lightning is very much not dead.”

“My only point there was that effort debating the boundary of cryptocurrency notability would be better spent on things that weren’t close to obvious keeps,” Maxwell remarked.

Lightning Network Wiki Page Faces Removal for Lack of Notability

The debate continued with a few more editors throwing in their two cents about the LN article on Wikipedia. It seems a good portion of the contributors believe the sources used in the article were not up to standards. Throughout most of the commentary, there were issues about the validity of sourced content. Besides the source problem, an editor named ‘Kjerish’ believes that the LN subject “has enough notability as a data structure alone.” “The subject potentially applies to several chains (not just Bitcoin),” the editor added. After the news spread about Wikipedia editors discussing deleting the LN page, a few crypto influencers spoke about the subject on social media.

Lightning Network Wiki Page Faces Removal for Lack of Notability

“Go ahead, delete it,” tweeted Casa CTO Jameson Lopp. “The Wikipedia page for Bitcoin was deleted in July of 2010 and it wasn’t a big deal — It ended up being restored 6 months later.” When someone posted about the subject on r/bitcoin, Greg Maxwell told the creator of the thread not to “spam this sort of thing” on the Reddit forum. “Wikipedia is exceptionally unlikely to remove this article, and in the fringe chance it were removed it would only be merged into some bigger article,” Maxwell stressed. Instead of discussing the subject further the Redditor said: “All right, deleted the post.”

What do you think about the Wikipedia editors who would like to see the Lightning Network article removed for lack of notability? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Fair Use.

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The post Lightning Network Wiki Page Faces Removal for Lack of Notability appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Leveraging Lightning, Bitfinex Users Can Now Shop at Bitrefill

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The Lightning Network may have just gotten its first business-to-business (B2B) payment channel.

Two of the most prominent Bitcoin companies in the space are collaborating: Bitfinex users can now shop at Bitrefill, straight from their trading environment on bitfinex.com. With access to the entire Bitrefill catalog, Bitfinex customers can use their account balance to buy a wide range of gift cards or to top up their prepaid phone credit. And, enabling the transfer of funds between Bitfinex and Bitrefill, the two companies have established a customized Lightning channel.

“As far as I know, this is the first time Lightning is used for B2B,” Bitrefill CCO John Carvalho told Bitcoin Magazine. “I never heard of anyone else setting up dynamic settlement.”

Bitfinex users can now shop at Bitrefill straight from their trading environment on bitfinex.com, and the two have established a Lightning channel.

Closing the Loop

Bitfinex — one of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges in the world by trading volume — just recently, on November 28, 2019, launched the option for users to deposit and withdraw funds over the Lightning Network. As the first major exchange to offer this feature, Bitfinex has immediately taken a step further and integrated the Layer 2 protocol into its backend as well.

“Bitcoin’s use as a means of payment represents an important milestone in the inevitable journey towards mass adoption,” said Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino in statement. “This is why the Lightning Network is so important. As an exchange, Bitfinex is at the forefront of developing solutions utilizing this technology.” 

The way Bitfinex and Bitrefill see it, this integration means that the Lightning Network is one step closer to “closing the loop” toward a circular economy: a system that doesn’t depend on fiat currency or even on-chain Bitcoin transactions for settlement. In this case, Bitfinex accepts Lightning deposits. From their funded account, it lets customers purchase a wide range of products and services on Bitrefill, which is subsequently paid over Lightning as well. (Most gift card selling merchants will presumably still be paid in fiat currency by Bitrefill, however.)

With their customized payment channel, orders between Bitfinex and Bitrefill are settled automatically and instantly, removing the need for credit term relationships. Leveraging the Lightning Network, payments will, of course, also be cheap as well as private, while leaving only a minimal footprint on the Bitcoin blockchain when channels are opened or closed.

Bitrefill

In 2014, Bitrefill started out as a provider of phone credit and (a little later) digital gift cards, effectively allowing Bitcoin users to swap their coins for goods and services without needing to convert back to fiat currency. Over the years, the Stockholm-based startup created an international catalog with over 2,000 gift cards, which include several of the biggest merchants in the world, like Apple, Amazon and Uber.

More recently, the startup has been establishing itself as a pioneer in the Lightning space. For one, Bitrefill was among the very first companies to start accepting Lightning transactions for payments. But going beyond that, the company has been rolling out several Lightning-specific services with names like “Thor channels” and “Turbo-charged channels,” offering convenient solutions for Bitcoin users who wish to set up Lightning channels.

Bitrefill now wants to help Bitcoin exchanges integrate Lightning, with Bitfinex as a first example of this, said Carvalho.

“We believe that getting Bitcoin exchanges on to the Lightning Network early is integral to preparing for the next wave of adoption and building out a parallel economy for Bitcoin,” he said. 

“We coordinated on our Lightning setups to support fat channels [Lightning channels that offer more liquidity than regular payment channels] and incorporate them into our integration. After the dust settles, we’ll be working with them to establish more automated systems for channel liquidity management, opening and closing channels, etcetera.”

The post Leveraging Lightning, Bitfinex Users Can Now Shop at Bitrefill appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Video: Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino on Adding Lightning Network Support

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On December 2, 2019, Bitfinex officially informed its subscribers that it had added support for Lightning Network deposits and withdrawals. Subsequently, Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino confirmed the information in a tweet. 

A few days before this announcement, Ardoino agreed to do an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine to provide more technical details about the Lightning integration. This marked a big step in the development of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, as a major exchange finally integrated second layer satoshis.

“I think that Lightning is definitely the best way to send and receive bitcoins,” said Ardoino during the opening of the interview. “For me, [the Lightning Network] is exactly how the perfect payment system should be built.”

How Bitfinex Integrates Lightning Network

In regards to the process that users will have to follow in order to send their Lightning satoshis to Bitfinex, Ardoino described a system during which the exchange issues a proprietary intermediary token. 

“The process is simple: you go on the Lightning Network deposit page, you generate an invoice, and then pay it with any Lightning wallet that you may use,” he said. “Bitfinex will credit you LNX, our proprietary Lightning Network currency, and then you can exchange it on a 1 to 1 ratio for bitcoins.” 

Bitfinex will not charge a premium for exchanging second-layer satoshis for mainchain BTC (or vice versa). However, withdrawals will have the regular fees. 

“There is no premium in this step,” said Ardoino. “However, we will apply a small fee when you process a withdrawal in the opposite way. But that’s it, we don’t apply any premium or any conversion rate for the service.”

From a technical point of view, Bitfinex makes use of lnd — the client developed by Lightning Labs. However, as acknowledged by Ardoino, Blockstream’s c-lightning is regarded as a worthy replacement in the near future. 

“Right now we are running LND, but we are planning to add c-lightning,” he said. “I like the c-lightning implementation because it feels more modular and plug-in based. It’s excellent as a base layer for additional developments, as it feels like a Linux kernel.” 

The Bitfinex CTO also revealed that the choice of a Lightning client is the result of a partnership that will be announced in the coming days. 

“At the moment, we are using LND because it’s also what our partner uses for integrations. More information about this collaboration will be announced this Wednesday [December 4, 2019],” he teased.

Being on the Right Side of Bitcoin History

Ardoino also pointed out that Bitfinex has always positioned itself on the side of Bitcoin innovation, and Lightning support is its follow-up to being pioneers in adding bech32 addresses and implementing SegWit.

“I think that it’s really important for an exchange to finally show real support for the Lightning Network,” he explained. “If we don’t take a little more risk, we will not be able to keep up with the innovation with which our industry is used. Bitfinex will do its part and has always worked to open the path for everyone else: you saw that with bech32 addresses and early SegWit adoption.”

In the coming days, Bitfinex will publish all of the information about connecting to its public node in order to open channels. Also, as clarified by Ardoino, tutorials will be provided in multiple languages in order to offer seamless onboarding.

Last but not least, Ardoino also addressed security concerns that might arise in adopting new technology. 

“If an exchange loses a few thousand dollars worth of BTC in order to improve and push the growth of this great technology, I think that the situation is not problematic at all,” he said. “It’s part of the risk that you’re taking when running an exchange. The best step we can take is to embrace Lightning early and prove that the technology is not as bad or insecure as it gets described.”

The post Video: Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino on Adding Lightning Network Support appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

On Lightning, Messaging Apps Emerge as Growing Use Case

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“Does instant messaging over Lightning have killer application potential?”

Lightning Labs developer Joost Jager asked his Twitter followers this rhetorical when he debuted a demo for his Lightning Network messaging application, Whatsat.

Your average Bitcoiner probably wouldn’t think of messaging as one of Lightning’s killer use cases, at least not before micropayments, streaming payments and the like. For encrypted messaging, they’d likely default to options like Signal, Keybase or Wire. 

These are certainly better than mainstream messaging apps, like Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp, whose encrypted options are thinly veiled save-faces that don’t offer much material confidentiality. But encrypted messaging needs to go further than privacy, Jager believes; they need censorship resistance too, and this is where Lightning-powered messaging comes in.

“The encryption part is similar, in both systems the message content is private,” Jager told Bitcoin Magazine. “The difference is that there is no central server involved. No single kill switch that could be used to shut down all communications. Or that is used more selectively to deny certain users to communicate.”

Whatsat: A New Approach to an Old Feature 

The Lightning Network has supported messages from day one, same with Bitcoin’s base layer. The Blockstream Satellite has been used in experiments around Lightning-driven messages and private text message services have leveraged Lightning payments. But recent tweeks to the protocol now make it easier to attach additional data to a payment and pass it on to other applications using type-length-value (TLV) payloads. 

TLV payloads allow people using communication protocols to attach additional, extraneous information onto a data packet. For Whatsat, this extraneous data would be the message that is bolted onto a Lightning transaction. 

The update that enabled TLV payloads paved the way for a concept like Whatsat which, alongside censorship resistance, could also make communications more private for end users, depending on how messages are sent or routed, Jager said.

“Chatting over Lightning also makes it much harder to find out who is communicating with whom. It is not required to have a direct (observable) TCP/IP connection between users and there is no central server either that could reconstruct the communication pathways,” he told us.

Lightning-powered messages (or transactions, for that matter) are onion routed, just like information passing through the Tor network. The messages are shunted from node to node, and each node can only identify the node that sent it the information or the node next in queue to receive it. 

Now, if one entity runs the majority of the nodes in a pathway then they may be able to unmask the sender and receiver, Jager admitted. 

“Privacy and security are relative concepts,” he continued.

In some cases, then, it might be better for users to set up direct payment channels with each other. For example, if a “spy” or “attacker” wanted to deanonymize a user via node surveillance, then onion routing the payment may offer significantly less privacy depending on the route, as described above. In this case, a direct payment channel would be more private. But if the surveilling party were an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and tracking TCP/IP addresses, then onion routing would be more private.

Direct channels could provide absolutely free messaging, however — something that some users might find a negligible benefit compared to potential privacy trade-offs. For instance, Lightning messaging is already a free-to-use service; when one user sends another user a message, they have to attach it to a payment, but the recipient can reject this payment after opening the message (for Whatsat, a return-to-sender message saying that the payment has been rejected serves as confirmation of the original message). 

As with Lightning payments writ large, a fee market is likely to develop for this service to route messages when a direct channel is not open. This could be seen as one of the cons, Jager said, but it’s also a trade-off some might be willing to accept for censorship-resistant, confidential communication. 

“There is the cost side, but also the benefit side,” Jager explained. “The weight of that is dependent on the awareness of users of the downsides of existing messaging systems. For most people, an imaginary world in which some authority can block two people from talking to each other in real life sounds like scary sci-fi. But it is where the vast majority of the users are at with the current state of messaging in the digital domain.”

Whatsat is currently in testnet, and its source code is on GitHub. But don’t expect a beta from Jager anytime soon. In our conversation, he mentioned that Whatsat is “only a proof of concept,” a side project of his that isn’t associated with Lightning Labs, his employer. It’s his hope that the hobby project will “inspire other people … to start developing” it further.

Sphinx Chat, a Different Approach to the Same Effect

Some developers have begun toying further with Lightning messaging, though not from Jager’s source code, and they’re close to launching a private beta.

Sphinx Chat, for instance, has been in motion for about a year. Project lead Paul Itoi told Bitcoin Magazine that its team cobbled together a prototype for a Lightning hackathon in New York in 2018. At this year’s Lightning Conference in Berlin, it released “a very hacky version to a handful of users on TestFlight,” Itoi told us, but they plan to drop a new beta version in the near future (you can register for the private beta on its website). 

The application takes its name from the Sphinx protocol, an upgrade that onion routes Lightning transactions over a Tor-esque network. Whatsat leverages the same protocol to achieve a certain degree of privacy, though it differs from Sphinx Chat in that it will offer free messaging within direct channels in addition to TLV payload messaging. Sphinx Chat is focusing solely on the latter. 

“Both are similar,” Itoi told us. “But [Jager’s] is designed to avoid fees since it uses a failed payment to deliver the message. This is currently free on LN. Sphinx inserts the message in the [TLV] and uses keysend to deliver and standard fees will apply.”

TLV still has an extra step to go before it’s production ready for mass messaging, however. For LND, the Lightning instance that Sphinx Chat runs, the team still needs to enable TLV messaging from the receiver’s end; it can receive the data, but it has no way of processing it. 

Lightning Labs is tracking and working on the issue on GitHub, but until it is sorted out, Sphinx Chat will rely on specific nodes hosted by Nodl to relay messages (which have been customized to fully support TLV payloads).

“We’ll stay in beta on nodes we’re hosting until those features are officially supported,” Itoi told us.

Once out of beta, though, Sphinx Chat will be totally open-source, he continued. At this point, node operators can establish fee markets for relaying messages, same as with Whatsat. He also sees it as a complementary application to StakWork, a chore app that allows people to complete tasks for sats. For example, workers can be notified and paid through Sphinx Chat

The Future of Encrypted Messaging?

Perhaps the first question that comes to mind with Lightning Network messaging: Why use any of these developments when we already have reliable, encrypted messaging apps?

Jager admitted that this is a definite “con,” since “Lightning is complicated compared to a centralized service.” Additionally, with a decentralized system like Lightning, “it can be difficult to deliver the same user experience that people are used to. An example of this — which is just as valid for payments — is how to deliver a message to a user that is offline.”

Still, there are reasons why someone may prefer Lightning-based messaging options to more centralized alternatives. Because the Lightning Network is decentralized, these options will be more censorship resistant and resistant to service outages that result from single points of failure. Itoi also views this development as indispensable for how it couples payments and communication as a single, permissionless entity. 

“The key benefit is integrating the ability to pay and communicate under one identity,” he said. “Our core belief: the privacy and censorship resistance that Lightning provides for payments should apply equally to speech. Using Lightning for chat will accelerate the adoption of bitcoin as a medium of exchange.”

This also opens up avenues for Lightning-powered forums, which would theoretically reduce spam given that, in Sphinx Chat’s case, each message costs something. Chatting also need not be limited to humans, Itoi believes. In the future, he envisions APIs and Internet-of-Things devices sending messages and payments to each other via Lightning (sorry, IOTA).

Like many other burgeoning applications and features being built on Bitcoin, Lightning messaging still has a ways to go. Another question to consider, besides usability, is whether users will be willing to pay to chat. This model is reminiscent of the old days of pay-per-message SMS, though it will certainly be much cheaper. Lightning messaging, depending on how hard it is to route messages, could cost as little as a sat or less. 

Still, with the promise of cheap, confidential and censorship-resistant messaging on the horizon (far off as it may be), Jager is optimistic in the future of this incipient use case.

“It isn’t said that a Lightning-based messenger can’t eventually match the ease of use of existing services,” Jager explained. “There surely is a ton of work to do, but I wouldn’t say it is impossible. At the moment, people generally have no problem with existing messaging services … but that is today. The future may be different. Perhaps the existing messaging services change their business model, perhaps some scandal happens in which huge amounts of metadata are leaked … I can’t say how this all will develop, but I think it is good to explore alternatives.”

The post On Lightning, Messaging Apps Emerge as Growing Use Case appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Zap’s Olympus Features Fiat-to-Lightning On-Ramp With Direct Wallet Deposits

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Zap wallet will soon let you buy bitcoin in the app and deposit the sats directly into your Lightning wallet after each buy.

“If you want, you can buy bitcoin inside of Zap with a bank account, debit card, Zelle, whatever — and it will give you the bitcoins, from purchase to spending on Lightning, in less than five seconds,” Zap founder Jack Mallers told Bitcoin Magazine.

Mallers said he and his team have been working on the feature, aptly dubbed Olympus, for about a year. It’s similar in function to SparkSwap’s desktop application, which also allows for direct-to-Lightning wallet buys, though in technical structure, Zap’s “a little bit more complex,” according to Mallers. His wallet uses something called Turbo channels to settle the transactions. And, more notably, Zap’s iteration can be integrated by other Bitcoin companies and service providers as well.

Third-party integration would mean more liquidity, for both Zap’s service and the Lightning Network as a whole. The idea, Mallers told us, is to weave a sturdy web of liquidity by creating an easy access point for onboarding users onto Lightning. He doesn’t want people to have to wait for well-entrenched services like Coinbase or BitPay to integrate the secondary network for users to have a convenient on-ramp to use the technology.

“This is really designed to get some of the licensing and regulatory relationships and advanced exchange infrastructure for Lightning into the hands of the good guys,” he told us, adding that Zap’s endgame is to get Lightning into the hands of millions of new, less-technically tolerant users. “Zap has this ambition of getting a million Lightning nodes running on individual devices all around the world. Lightning doesn’t have a mainstream track yet, and I want to be able to tell no-coiners to download Zap, enter a debit card and get the Lightning payment instantly.”

Cash for Sats

Mallers stressed that Olympus is a completely opt-in “standalone service.” He made this distinction because the buying option will require a degree of KYC (name, email and home address), though Zap’s wallet will still be KYC-free for baseline Lightning functionality, he assured.

The service promises noncustodial, instantly delivered purchases of bitcoin directly into a user’s Zap wallet by way of a special technical workaround called Turbo channels. Bitrefill was the first to leverage this tech with its Thor Turbo channels. Through Bitrefill, users can purchase a channel with bitcoin, a few alts, their Coinbase account or with their Bitrefill balance. Mallers said that Zap’s solution is the first to allow direct bank-to-bitcoin cash trades for Turbo channels; additionally, the team had to adapt the concept, originally coded in the eclair Lightning language, for the more popular LND implementation. 

This pioneering channel creation mechanism allows users to spend purchased funds in their Lightning wallet immediately without waiting for the transaction that funded their wallet to be confirmed on chain. (When you set up a Lightning wallet, you first have to make a “funding transaction” to create a payment channel with another party, and traditionally, you need to wait for this funding transaction to be confirmed on the blockchain to start transacting on Lightning).

Turbo foregoes the need for immediate onchain validation. It works like this: If you were buying sats from Zap, the wallet provider creates a channel for you and “pushes” bitcoin to you in the channel. So, if you bought 10,000 sats through the app, Zap creates the payment channel and “pushes” the 10,000 sats to your side of the channel in exchange for cash. This creates instant liquidity on your end of the channel, and the funds can be spent immediately. 

“Previously, the user story read like this: take fiat, buy bitcoin, wait until you’re allowed to withdraw, withdraw and wait for confirmations, deposit bitcoin onto the Lightning Network, open channels, wait for more confirmations, scan QR code. Not anymore,” Mallers said in a blog post announcing Olympus.

As with Bitrefill’s Thor service, when you use Olympus, you’re actually buying a turbo channel from Zap that is preloaded with sats, “which is basically a more complicated way of saying that you’re buying bitcoin on Lightning,” Mallers said. As such, the service requires “a certain level of trust,” because Zap acts as a central hub of liquidity (though this isn’t much different from Lightning wallets and other services offering their nodes as routing hubs and setting up bidirectional payment channels for their users).

There’s also the trade-off of not waiting for on-chain confirmations to begin transacting, though Mallers said that users can choose to “wait for the channels to reach however many confirmations they like.” Zap may also offer alternative modes of delivery, such as regular Lightning invoices or, in the case that the buyer wants on-chain settlement, submarine swaps.

Global Liquidity and Massive Adoption

Zap is tapping into a Chicago liquidity provider — and by proxy, a network of some of the industry’s top exchanges — to supply Olympus with a steady pipeline of bitcoin.

Mallers’ aspiration is that Olympus will expand well beyond Zap’s influence to other Bitcoin services. Chief among these, he says, the wallet’s been working with Square’s Cash App and BTC PayServer to spur Lightning adoption among merchants. This follows fresh news that Cash App has allocated a grant to fund future BTC PayServer development. The capital pledge is a welcome windfall for the payment processor, as it has subsisted on purely open-source development and funding throughout its two-year lifespan. 

If all goes as planned, Zap, Cash App and BTC PayServer synergizing their services could set the stage for a breakthrough in Lightning merchant adoption. A common hangup for processing Lightning payments for vendors has been converting to fiat to mediate bitcoin’s volatility. Currently, no solutions exist to offer a reliable on-/off-ramp from Lightning to fiat, though if Mallers’ vision comes to fruition, Zap’s new product may have finally produced a solution.

And this doesn’t stop at Cash App. Other Lightning wallets, exchanges and Bitcoin services can integrate Zap’s solution without even running their own node to provide channel liquidity. Zap’s got the sats; all they need to do is open a channel with Zap’s node and support the LND version of Turbo, which Mallers’ plans to open source over the coming weeks.

“Everyone building on Lightning should be able to leverage the infrastructure work we’ve done to get here. So, Olympus will be available to any external app, product, business, etc. to use,” Mallers wrote in the post.

For now, the service will be available as a closed beta, for which you can register here. Mallers hopes to open it to the public in the coming months, but he wants to ride out a recently discovered bug in Lightning’s software before injecting more liquidity onto the network. Once enough Lightning developers give the all clear, he’ll take it out of beta. To start, Olympus is only available in the U.S., though Zap hopes to expand to other countries in the near future.

He also plans on upping channel limits to accommodate wumbo channels (yes, that means very big channels) which could hold up to 1 BTC, but for now, Zap’s turbo channels will play within the boundaries of accepted channel limits (about 0.04 to 0.05 BTC).

The post Zap’s Olympus Features Fiat-to-Lightning On-Ramp With Direct Wallet Deposits appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.