With the advent of the long-anticipated
Lightning Network (LN), crypto enthusiasts have more to look forward to than faster, cheaper transactions. Just as smart contracts brought DApps to Ethereum’s network, the Lightning Network is primed to bring a host of Lightning apps to Bitcoin. These applications, fittingly dubbed LApps, will leverage the Lightning Network to usher in a new generation of payment applications to the blockchain industry.
Lightning Labs rolled-out their
beta
for the first implementation of the Lightning Network on March 15, 2018. In practice, the Lightning Network allows Bitcoin users to send transactions on an off-chain network through payment channels. Since these channels aren’t connected to the blockchain, users can send near-instant transactions, however small they may be, without incurring exorbitant fees.
Before the Lightning Network went live, Lightning Labs launched their Lightning Desktop
Wallet
so users could get a feel for the network while it was in testnet. Now that the LN is in full beta, Lightning Lab’s wallet has been joined by
Zap
, a user-friendly wallet by Jack Mallers that’s meant to make the Lightning Network more accessible to the general public.
In the few weeks since its release, developers have introduced LApps for the network that look outside the limits of mere wallet and payment channel functionality. Now, there are dozens of Lightning applications for any of four distinct implementation (lnd, eclair, c-lightning and lit) across four programming languages (Go, C, Scala and Java), as developers continue to build on the technology.
One such developer,
Nadav Ivgi
, has been particularly busy. He’s the man behind the seven new applications showcased during Blockstream’s “Week of LApps.” The blockchain development company presented the projects as an extension of
Lightning Charge
, a payment processing solution for c-lightning, Blockstream’s implementation of the protocol in the C programming language.
Among these creations, Ivgi gives us
nanotip
, a tipbot that gives content creators and users an LN alternative to traditional bitcoin tipbots. Complementing the
WooCommerce Lightning Gateway
, one of Blockstream’s first LApps,
Lightning Publisher
is an additional WordPress plug-in that gives publishers an ad-free revenue alternative. With it, they can charge their readers a subscription to access content, payable through LN payment channels. Similarly,
FileBazaar
lets content creators monetize their data and files
—
be they pictures, videos or other documents
—
with an online marketplace that offers pay-per-view access to such content.
Lightning Charge’s LApp suite also comes with its own point-of-sale solution for merchants,
nanopos
. As one might imagine, point-of-sale applications have proliferated for the Lightning Network, as developers grind out code to find a solution to the market’s needs. Among these, we have
another
WooCommerce plug-in built on the Lightning Network Daemon (
lnd
), and
Strike
, a Stripe-esque API for merchants built with Eclair, the Scala programming language’s implementation of the LN. Eclair
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