“WebLN is a library and set of specifications for lightning apps and client providers to facilitate communication between apps and users’ lightning nodes in a secure way. It provides a programmatic, permissioned interface for letting applications ask users to send payments, generate invoices to receive payments, and much more”
Source: webln.dev
Inspired by Ethereum’s web3 standard, William O’Beirne set out to make a similar standard for lightning which could improve the experience on the web. Since then, it has gained noticeable traction in the community with lots of different lightning apps like Lightning Joule now supporting it. At Boltz, we constantly obsess about user experience and brainstorm ideas around making Boltz easier to use for the end users. Integrating WebLN was a no-brainer. Boltz integrates WebLN in a client-agnostic manner and follows the recommended UX best practices. Integration of WebLN makes a lot of processes like generating and paying invoices a little easier, as depicted in the gif below.
There are, however, other attempts to standardize the use of lightning on the web, notably by W3C. Nevertheless, we believe that WebLN is best poised and ticks all the boxes as of right now.
The different lightning browser extensions, notably Joule, have been instrumental in making lightning easier to use. It lightning-charges any browser, which gives the user the ability to pay and create invoices without leaving their browser. We also like the idea of a lightning public key being used as a means of authentication on the internet, no PII required. Kwh is another WebLN powered browser extension with the same goal as Joule, but for different implementations of the lightning network: lightningd/eclair/ptarmigan. The fast-paced development of the lightning protocol and UX improvements is happening simultaneously which is opening up the floodgate of possibilities to build useful lapps. We are more excited than ever to continue taking an active part in building an exciting and easy-to-use product for end users.
Happy Swapping :)
