Last week in bitcoin - Lightning++ Edition
Highlights from the leading LN developer conference...
Hi Insiders. This is Tuma, open source reporter from the Insider Edition. I spent last week at Lightning++ Berlin. Here is what caught my eye:
The first ever Lightning++ in Berlin has come to an end. Talks, project announcements, research updates, demos and hackathon… and it all was Lightning-centered. If you missed it, check out the recordings for day 1, 2 and 3!
The Lightning++ conference was a success, bringing together Lightning experts, researchers and developers from all over the world to discuss the current state of the protocol. They discussed ideas on where the protocol is heading and new developments moving into production. New companies were announced, novel implementations were showcased, and years of research were finally presented to the public.
Some highlights from the conference: Rene Pickhardt presented his latest results on his research on routing reliability and liquidity, Fabrice Drouine of Acinq showcased their approach to funds security, Peter Todd highlighted the issue of having persistent node logs and Matt Corallo warned the audience about the direction Bitcoin is taking by relying heavily on custodial solutions.
Allen Farrington presented Flux, a new Bitcoin native asset managing company, Evan Kaloudis of Zeus showcased their new graduated wallet, and Calle presented the Cashu ecosystem, highlighting the next steps for the e-cash protocol.
Splice Script was presented at Lightning++ Berlin. This tool aims to describe a splice, of any complexity, in the simplest way possible.
During his Lightning++ talk “Splicing Lightning”, Core-lightning developer Dusty Daemon presented his recent research work aimed at creating a language script that facilitates the development of more and more complex splicing tasks, ranging from simpler operations like moving funds from one channel to a new one, to moving funds from many channels to many other channels.
This new scripting language, called Splice Script, aims to be the easiest possible from a syntactic point of view, to avoid discouraging splicing use and to reduce risk of misplacing users’ funds. Moreover, it allows to easily audit what is happening behind the scenes.
Splice Script has not been officially released yet. There is a highly experimental version in the C-lightning code base, but it is no yet available to the public.
NLightning is a new Lightning Network implementation which aims to be the go-to version for companies, banks and corporation to run their own infrastructure.
During his Lightning++ talk “NLightning: Implementing Lightning in .NET”, OpenSats grantee Nickolas Goline presented his work on his new Lightning Network implementation, NLightning. This new variation adheres to the Basis of Lightning Technologies (BOLT) specifications, to ensure compatibility with the other implementations already present on the market.
NLightning is developed in C#, which belongs to the .NET family. It’s a highly efficient, performant programming language; even some of the biggest companies (i.e. JP Morgan - Chase, BoA) in the world have been building their infrastructure with it. Having an LN implementation written in the same language can enable easy access and integration for those companies to build their own Lightning infrastructure.
Nickolas Goline showcased his work by opening a channel towards an LND node live, highlighting its compatibilities with the current implementations. As of today, around 75% of the BOLTs have been implemented, with the goal of implementing the remaining BOLT-4, BOLT-5 and BOLT-7 by the end of 2026.
Lightning++ hackathon was another success, with 14 projects competing for a prize pool of more than 10 Millions sats. The first place was awarded to “Nuts Are Pure Signal”, a Signal fork with a Cashu integration.
On hackathon day, 14 teams of developers compete to create the best possible Bitcoin-related project. Projects were evaluated using the Olympics Women’s Gymnastics Rubric based on routine difficulty (project idea, potential impact of project, ambition), routine execution (project achievement, what was actually built, if it works) and general effect (swag factor, presentation, applicability to the scaling theme).
The hackathon winning project was Nuts Are Pure Signal, a Signal fork that replaces mobilecoin payments with a Cashu integration. The second place was given to Obfusats, a tool that aims to complicate Lightning traffic analysis using Cashu mints and obfuscation. Third place was given to Glacier Wallet, a wallet that allows to easily create time-locked transactions with CHECKTIMELOCKVERIFY.
Other honorable mentions where given to valuable projects: REKTBOT9000 won “Best Design” and “Best Vibes”, Satoshibot won “Best Beginner Hack” and “Most Unnecessary Use of OpenTimeStamp”, “Best Electrum Plugin” was awarded to Glacier Wallet and “Best Use of LDK” to Mandel.