We tested Lightning on Litecoin

TL;DR We ran eclair on Litecoin (testnet) and it worked. We didn’t even have to change the code!

Until recently we didn’t know that much about Litecoin, mostly because we have always been committed to Bitcoin. But with the recent surge in segwit signalling on Litecoin, there is a good chance that it will be activated very soon on this blockchain. With eclair 0.2-alpha3 to be released, we looked at what was needed to make it run on Litecoin.

How hard was it? Surprisingly, not much!

In fact, it worked out of the box, all we had to do is change a few configuration parameters. Here is a short video of our test.

To be honest, a few things are a bit off or need to be tuned (currency labels, maximum amounts, delays in blocks, …) but it is very possible that the first LN payment carrying real value will be made on Litecoin :)

If you want to test it yourself, you will find more information there.

Swap bitcoins for litecoins with Lightning

This test also paves the way for a much anticipated feature of Lightning: trustless instant atomic cross-chain swaps.

In other words: Alice and Bob will be able to exchange BTC for LTC instantly, without requiring trusted third parties, using “atomic” transactions (i.e. either Bob gets his LTC and Alice gets her BTC, or nothing is transferred).

Stay tuned for more Lightning magic soon!