Note: A Redditor pointed out two clarifications for this article. First, the Blockstream Store is still selling stickers. Secondly, the Eclair wallet does display the USD-denominated capacity amount when opening a new Lightning channel. I think I missed the stickers on the Blockstream Store due to the layout of the site. I’m not sure how I missed the USD-denominated balance displayed under the BTC amount when opening a new channel. I may have missed it because it is only displayed in a lighter font once you start typing in an amount of BTC, but now I see it clear as day. We’re leaving the article as-is and not correcting these errors since this is a description of an experience as it happened, but it made sense to add this clarification at the beginning.
On Thursday, I decided to try the recently released Eclair Bitcoin wallet for Android, which has support for the highly-anticipated Lightning Network. What follows is a thorough description of the entire experience.[1]
The first thing I noticed when downloading the Eclair Wallet from AQINC was the relatively low number of downloads. Between one and ten thousand people have downloaded the Lightning-enabled wallet, as compared to the millions of individuals that have downloaded traditional mobile bitcoin wallets over the years. Of course, this is a new release with unpolished software, so the relatively low number of downloads makes sense. It brought me back to the earlier days of trying out the Blockchain.info wallet shortly after it was first released.
Once the app was downloaded and launched, the first thing that popped up was a full-screen warning message.
In addition to offering a reminder that this is still beta software and only small amounts of money
