The future of lightning is you
I believe in open source software. Bitcoin is open source money. As soon as I discovered this in 2013, there was no way back. When i began to develop my interest in Bitcoin and the core protocols and ideas around it, i was flashed.
UPDATE:
It seems Jimmy Song included this article in his awesome Bitcoin Tech Talk Newsletter. I will therefore extend the two node giveaway until midnight (CET) tonight. Thanks for the attention boost Jimmy!
Back then, even more than now, the basic concept of an open source implementation of a monetary system was hard to explain to people. Luckily, i was already part of a vivid local community that did a lot of education work. That’s why i discovered Bitcoin right after a talk about a talk about “open source intrusion detection systems” i gave myself.
The main challenges with Bitcoin are still the same. Scalability, Privacy and a steep learning curve for new developers are hot topics today. Well, at least we got rid of MtGox back then.
Lightning is different
Lightning is a second-layer solution for the Bitcoin blockchain that addresses the scaling issues surrounding it today. Compared to my “love on first sight” BTC experience, it took quite a bit of time until i started to appreciate Lightning in the same way.
Don’t get me wrong — i appreciated the effort of every single project that builds solution on Bitcoin, but i simply wasn’t able to wrap my head around where Lightning would fit on the bigger picture around BTC. Until i watched the brilliant Andreas M. Antonopoulos at Baltic Honeybadger 2017.
My perception of bitcoin changed back then. I stopped seeing Bitcoin as a network or single application and started to look at it from a protocol layer point of view. I like to think of Bitcoin as the core settlement layer for ANY transaction. The content doesn’t matter too much.
My inner nerd likes to see Bitcoin as the “Ethernet” of open source money. Similar to Ethernet, it operates in the lower two layers of my imaginary OSS OSI money transmission model: The Data Link layer and the Physical layer. This nerd topic will be food for another article soon.
Similar to Bitcoin, Lightning is an open-source protocol in which anyone can contribute. You can contribute in many different ways like eg run your own node, develop games powered by lightning, educate interested developers about how to implement Lightning for their use case or a dozen other ways ;-)
Recent news show that this can be fun and a real business at the same time. For example, over 150 people bought pizza with bitcoin past week by using the Lightning Network. This is possible because of a new crypto payments startup called “Fold”, which launched the web-based Domino’s portal a couple of days ago. Because Lightning is so fast, https://ln.pizza can basically make fiat pizza purchases on behalf of hungry lightning users w/o risking any funds.
The path to adoption
This is only ONE of many great examples. Overall usage increases, that’s sure. According to 1ML, the overall lightning network set new record highs this week with more than 27,900 payment channels able to facilitate more than 2.7 million USD.
I see this mostly as confirmation that the efforts by the community start to pay off. Projects like Pierre Rochard’s node launcher GUI and the work Alex Bosworth publishes every week and lower the bar for all of us. Many people contribute a lot of their free time. I am grateful for all the work they did.
And this leads me to the final paragraph and main reason why i wrote this short article after a long work day on a typical Monday afternoon. I think Lightning is a fantastic technology and will change our daily routines in many ways. I want to be part of the solution and i hope that worked in the past couple of years. That’s why i want to “suck” two of you right into the Lightning network. One of the easiest ways to do that, is to support a company that builds on top of BTC+Lightning and give away TWO free nodl.it nodes.
How to claim YOUR node
Send me an e-mail to marsmensch@pm.me and tell me what you plan to build with the node. I will select two candidates from all emails i receive until MONDAY (25.02.19 midnight CET) and send you discount codes for a free node shipped right to you. Yes, seriously. No strings attached.
Thanks for reading that far & have a lot of fun! BTC donations also welcome and never forget:
Have fun, this is crypto after all!
PS.: At some point lightning might even decouple from Bitcoin. I can’t wait trying to wrap my head around that. Cheers, Florian.
