Building on Lightning: lipa Is Revolutionizing Wallets with the Breez SDK
Everyone knows what a “wallet” is, and everyone knows it’s an imperfect metaphor for bitcoin. Some bitcoin wallets — like pieces of paper — offer less than the real thing. Others offer far more: multi-platform interoperability, extraterrestrial-grade encryption, a slick UI, fiat on and off-ramps, point of sale, etc.
lipa is pushing the boundaries of what users can expect, what we can do with bitcoin, and what we can reasonably call a “wallet.” One reason that lipa can afford to experiment and push those boundaries is because the Lightning backend is built on the Breez SDK. They can flip and twirl on the trapeze of peer-to-peer bitcoin transactions because we’ve built the rigging and checked the safety net.
Taking lipa from an Idea to Disruption
Adrian, Bastian, and Patrick decided back in 2020 to start a crypto business, quickly realizing that bitcoin is the only practical and ethical option. They value financial freedom and fair payments above all else. Founders after my own heart.
After playing with the idea of building node-management software, they saw an open niche: there was a lack of user-friendly solutions for businesses to accept and use bitcoin in their day-to-day operations. So they built one. This was a good start, but they soon encountered a dilemma many of us have faced: for bitcoin to be attractive to businesses, they need customers who want to spend it; and for bitcoin to be attractive to customers, they need businesses willing to accept it.
In order to promote bitcoin adoption, they were going to have to work the problem from both ends. Ergo, they built a user-friendly consumer “wallet.” But this is no ordinary send-and-receive, store-your-recovery-phrase-carefully bitcoin app. It’s designed to solve bitcoin’s problems by solving businesses’ problems by solving users’ problems.
For example, there are millions of bitcoin users out there, each able to transact with the others. If you’re visiting any major city, you can bet there are several thousand other bitcoiners near you. But how do you find them if you want to spend your bitcoin on a book, a beer, or a burger? For businesses, it’s the same but reversed: how do customers looking to spend their bitcoin find you?
lipa has solved this common conundrum by including BTC Map in the app, which indicates the locations of bitcoin businesses. They took all the mystery out of finding Schelling points. Wanna find something? Use their map. Simple.
lipa is also working on a bitcoin debit card, a bitcoin IBAN, and connecting lnurl addresses to phone numbers, which would obviate invoices. Watching crypto bros “speedrun all of financial history from scratch” is hilarious. But that’s not what lipa is doing. Instead of replicating fiat’s errors, they’re importing some standard, innocuous fiat tech that will lower barriers to entry and help onboard the masses.
lipa calls this UX marvel a “wallet,” but that’s like John von Neumann calling himself a number cruncher. They are reconceptualizing the utility of bitcoin. And they’re doing it transparently, without taking custody of users’ funds.
The Stronger the Foundation, the Higher You Can Build
The reason lipa can reach these heights and nail these experiments is because the Lightning backend runs on the Breez SDK. When lipa decided to develop a consumer app, they immediately opted for an SDK. Lightning is complex, and building a Lightning app from scratch would mean fewer resources available to optimize the UX.
They started evaluating different solutions, but their biggest challenge was liquidity and channel management. They actually started creating a custom LSP solution based on Breez’s lspd, until we met at a conference and they shared their experience. I told them about the Breez SDK we were about to release, which was going to include channel and liquidity management, free choice of LSPs, and open-source code.
Guess which SDK they’re using? Their experience went from “challenging” to “super easy.” Those are direct quotes from the lipa team. Here’s the secret: just as lipa focuses unerringly on the UX, so do we. It’s just that their developers are our users.
And just like bitcoin gets stronger when users and businesses can find each other, lipa is helping us improve our SDK just as our SDK is helping them build such a brilliant app. They tell us what functions and APIs they would like to see, so we know what to work on next. And they and their users have some great ideas. For example, they’ve mentioned splicing, asynchronous payments, and local routing. We’ve considered adding all of those, but only through talking to the developers implementing the SDK can we assess which should have priority.
It’s been a big year for Breez. We’re doing things we’ve never done before, we’ve come a long way, and we’ve met some great partners who are helping us along. But as with bitcoin, this is still just the beginning.
