- Square CEO Jack Dorsey reveals the company’s plan to boost Bitcoin adoption with the Lightning Development Kit (LDK).
- Square’s product aims to provide tools for Bitcoin wallet developers to create unique and customized experiences.
Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey unveiled the company’s first product focused on cryptocurrencies: the Lightning Development Kit (LDK). According to a Medium post from the Square team, the product will provide tools for developers of Bitcoin wallets and applications to create “customized experiences”. The Lightning Development Kit is based on the Rust Lightning project and will have an API, language bindings, demo apps and other features focused on driving the adoption of Bitcoin and its Lightning Network.
The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a second layer solution payment protocol that enables fast transactions with low rates processed off-chain. Users who utilize the Lightning Network (LN) must open “payment channels” to send and receive Bitcoin. Although it is a solution with a lot of potential, a study by the University of Budapest confirmed that it has deficiencies in terms of cost-effectiveness, privacy and security.
This last point was proven in September last year, when a bug in the LN allowed an attacker to open a payment channel to make fake transactions and steal coins from the pair.
Square seeks to make Bitcoin a global currency
Despite the difficulties mentioned, the Square team has decided to focus on the Bitcoin LN. According to the publication, the Square team spoke with “dozens of wallet developers” and found that there is a demand to integrate the LN into their projects. With this initiative, Sqaure not only intends to promote the adoption of Bitcoin, but also seeks:
For bitcoin to become a widely used global currency — one that can’t be stopped, tampered with, or rigged in anyone’s favor (…)
In addition, the Square team claims that the aspects mentioned not only in the LN, but in the Bitcoin blockchain must be improved: security, privacy, scalability and an improvement in the UX. At the same time, the company claims to be in a privileged position to achieve this goal. The product they have developed will allow developers to achieve this by:
- Adding Lightning capabilities to existing bitcoin wallets (…).
- Supporting multi-device, multi-application access to a single wallet.
- Allowing wallets to make UX/security/privacy tradeoffs such as external transaction signing and customizing their state backup to a cloud service.
The CEO of Sqaure and Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is an avid supporter of Bitcoin and celebrated Sqaure’s announcement through his Twitter account. As reported by CNF, he was behind some of the most relevant initiatives for the ecosystem last year. First, he announced the creation of the Bluesky team to transition Twitter from a centralized network to an open source one that follows Bitcoin’s principles of transparency and freedom.
He also made a trip to Africa and stated that this is one of the most important regions for the adoption of Bitcoin. According to Dorsey, the future of Bitcoin will be defined by what happens in that continent.
Square Crypto is focusing on Lightning! ⚡️ https://t.co/boOiAAlLwc
Recommended for you
• Solana in the Spotlight: Analysis of the Surprising Rise in the Crypto Market• Best Crypto to Buy Now• Ethereum Bulls Unleash ‘Inevitable Rage Pump’ After Multi-Month Accumulation— jack ??? (@jack) January 22, 2020
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and don’t miss any hot news anymore! Do you like our price indices?
