Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is a Layer 2 technology that offers many advantages over altcoins for making Bitcoin into a peer-to-peer payments technology.
Lightning Labs just released the alpha version of a new protocol called Lightning Loop, designed to give users the ability to deposit and withdraw bitcoin from their payment channels without closing these channels entirely.
Blockstream has launched its satellite messaging application programming interface (API) on mainnet. Essentially, this means users can now broadcast data via the company’s satellite network and pay with Lightning payments.
The experiment has been making an impression on the bitcoin community; so far, Andreas Antonopoulos has been in on it, as has Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey who took up the flame from Matt Odell.
Blockstream’s COO Samson Mow explains how “Liquid is designed to facilitate fast and reliable high value transfers” of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies -- eventually.)
