Introducing Breez: lightning fast Bitcoin payments

In a previous article Lightning Network is the Future of Bitcoin, I’ve explained why I believe that the success of Bitcoin will be greatly impacted by its tradability and its ability to impact our everyday commerce. Today, I want to introduce Breez, an initiative that will help Lightning Network to be widely adopted by users and businesses.

By harnessing the power of Lightning Network, Breez enables a simple, fast and easy use of Bitcoin. Breez aims to provide a new user experience to perform payments and transactions. Breez users can conveniently pay others using their mobile device or a Breez card with all the advantages attached to using Bitcoin, such as safety and anonymity. Breez is an end-to-end solution, allowing consumers to use it physically in merchants’ points of sale, perform online purchases and transfer funds to other Breez users (locally or remotely). Breez will also enable users and businesses to convert their fiat currencies to bitcoins and vice versa by collaborating with exchange partners that will seamlessly integrate their exchange functionality inside the Breez platform.

By focusing on user experience, leveraging Lightning Network and providing an end-to-end solution, Breez aims to transform Bitcoin to a functional currency, commonly used in everyday commerce and widely adopted by customers and businesses.

Focusing on User Experience

The key to the success of Bitcoin as a factional currency is wide user adoption. Since adoption is mainly driven by user experience (UX), Breez will introduce a new way of executing Bitcoin payments by providing an unparalleled UX. Breez will enable users to interact with merchants in a simple, fast and secure manner. This experience will be delivered via a Breez card. Breez card is a physical card and a mobile app that allow users to buy goods with the same level of convenience of a standard credit card or other NFC-based payment systems like Apple Pay. Breez card empowers users and enables them to maintain sole and full control of their bitcoins.

How does it work?

After a payment request is issued by the merchant, a Breez user can pay simply by holding a physical Breez card, or a mobile device running a Breez card app, near a merchant’s POS. Then, a notification is sent to the user’s mobile device requesting her to approve the payment. Technically, the POS reads an ID from a Breez card using NFC and sends a payment request in a form of bolt11 LN invoice (containing the details necessary to complete a transaction) via a mobile notification to a user’s Breez card app. The actual LN transaction is executed via the Breez card app from the user’s mobile device. Breez users can also reject payment requests via received notifications (e.g. in a scenario where she passes her card to a merchant) to allow better control of Breez card usage.

Using Lightning Network

At the core of Breez technology stands Lightning Network, Breez artifacts are represented in LN as follows:

• Breez user: a light client, running as part of Breez card app in a mobile device, connected via LN payment channel to Breez server node. Breez card app provides an end user interface required to fulfill Breez product workflows.
• Breez POS: a light client or full node (optional), running as part of Breez POS in a tablet, mobile device, PC or an appliance connected via LN payment channel to Breez server node. A Breez POS is a tailored version of the Breez card app containing the ability to read information from Breez cards and issue payment requests. This POS app can be installed on any tablet/mobile device supporting NFC. In addition to its payment functionality, the POS app contains a configuration interface, providing merchants the capability to send received bitcoins to a partner exchange for a seamless fiat conversion.
• Breez hub: one more instances of full nodes, connected via LN payment channels to Breez user and POS nodes, as well as to partner exchange nodes.
• Partner exchange: an implementation of LN exchange running a full node. Breez will provide an open architecture to interact with this type of node (we will discuss this in future articles). Integration with exchange nodes is required in order to convert fiat currencies to bitcoins and vice versa.

Examples of Lightning Network Workflows

Establishing a Payment Channel with a Partner Exchange

Establishing a Payment Channel with a Breez POS

Establishing a Payment Channel with a Breez User

Fulfilling a Payment from a Breez User to a Breez POS

Converting a Breez User’s Fiat to Bitcoin

Converting a Breez POS’s Bitcoin to Fiat

Partner Exchange Integration

Breez will support an open architecture, allowing new exchanges to be added to the Breez platform. We’re happy to announce that our friends from LGO Exchange will be the first exchange to integrate in the Breez platform. We will provide exchange integration details in the near future and welcome more exchange partners to join our platform.

Open Source and LN Contributions

Since our main goal is to advance the use of bitcoin using LN, we will release all of Breez’s software under an open source license. In addition, we will contribute as much as we can to existing LN implementations.

Network Topology

We believe in a decentralized network. Breez nodes are aimed to bootstrap Lightning Network and provide a desirable UX. We intend to invest in this area and work with the community to offer node discovery services (we will provide more details soon).

We are very excited to be a part of the bitcoin revolution. If you feel we share the same vision of transforming bitcoin to become a functional currency, please reach out. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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