Lightning, Duplex and the Search for Scalable Bitcoin Micropayments
Like most emerging technologies, bitcoin exists in a gap between what could be possible should the technology mature and its abilities today. For instance, there may be no older and bigger 'buried treasure' use case for bitcoin than its ability to serve as a protocol for micropayments. Compared to credit cards and PayPal, the latter of which defines a micropayment as less than roughly $5, bitcoin is divisible into 100 million smaller units called Satoshis, valued at $0.000002 at today's price levels. Proponents have long theorized that this divisibility, coupled with a wider adoption of....
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Ryan X. Charles, co-founder and software engineer of Bitcoin-based content sharing platform Yours, officially introduced the world’s first Bitcoin micropayments web wallet that is structurally similar to Core’s Lightning network. Upon the introduction of Lightning by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015, developers and startups saw the first potential of a Bitcoin micropayments system which would allow applications and platforms to rely on the security measures of the Bitcoin network but benefit from increased flexibility and scalability. Steemit under fire of criticism. Essentially, the....
Prominent Bitcoin enthusiast and proposer of ‘duplex micropayment channels,’ Christian Decker, announced on Twitter today that he will be joining the Blockstream team to work on L2 protocols. Decker Joins Blockstream to Work on Lightning Network. According to Blockstream’s official blog, Decker was hired on to bring his expertise and talent to the company’s current research on lightning networks. While pursuing this line of work he will be joined by Blockstream developer, Rusty Russell, who has made theoretical contributions to the advancement of lightning networks in the past. Decker is....
Lightning networks are considered a promising innovation in the Bitcoin space, which would make the Bitcoin system much more scalable and able to process transactions at a high rate and low cost, and are suitable as an alternative to existing payment networks. In February, developers Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja proposed a decentralized Bitcoin Lightning Network where related transactions can take place instantly on "micropayment channels" off-chain, and only the final settlement is processed by the blockchain. According to the authors, lightning networks would enable Bitcoin....
Applications built on top of the Lightning Network allow for micropayments, opening the door for integrations with existing video games and podcasts.
A combination of BitTorrent and Lightning network can potentially offer stiff competition to Netflix and similar services. Luke Cage fans on Netflix had to go without their usual daily fix for a while last week, following a massive DDoS attack on the internet. While the DDoS attacks can be considered as acceptable risks for an internet based business, a combination of Bitcoin and BitTorrent presents itself as a huge threat to services like Netflix. Since Bitcoin gained popularity, it was considered as an ideal method for micropayments. The low transmission cost advantage which Bitcoin had....