Bitcoin Forum

https://www.coindesk.com/atomic-action-will-2018-year-cross-blockchain-swap/

Early examples of atomic swaps technology emerged in various stages in 2017, and while there's disagreement as to the timeline they'll be available to the public, some believe 2018 will be their year.

https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/948615162432446464

'The atomic age is coming, what cannot be swapped will be left behind."

https://btcmanager.com/torguard-accepts-lightning-network-payments/

TorGuard, an anonymous VPN and proxy service provider, publicized its acceptance of mainnet Lightning Network bitcoin payments.

c-lightning is not production ready. TorGuard will cover loss of funds when sending us LN payments. Testnet is so boring.

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Should we believe that it will come this year?

What will be the impact on ETH and all the smallest alt? I guess everyone will move their money from those to BTC?

I have always been looking forward to the official implementation of the lightning network, because it is the problem of To solve block congestion that prevents the further increase of bitcoin, so if this problem can be solved, then bitcoin to the moon. ;D

Maybe with this could impact BTC.

It will most probably coming this year since there were rumors that they have been finalizing on the tests made on the testnet.
The lightning network was successfully implemented on the testnet and coins were successfully transferred on it. So after finalizing the test they will most probably launch it on the network. We still have 11 months more left for this year so the chances for the Lightning Network to launch this year are quite high.

If it gets the job done, it can be made to work. TCP/IP is used for stuff like YouTube, and we've pushed the limits of it to serve all video needs.

The point is that other, inefficient ways have still found their placement in modern technology because of the network effect. If it's good enough that people can scale it to make it work, it's miles more convenient than rebuilding the entire system from scratch.

Tough to agree with, I know... but this is why we have Lightning Network, as it's a weird inefficient build on top of Bitcoin, but it works, and it will work well as we keep putting innovation into it. It would be a nightmare to rebuild an entire Bitcoin-like crypto, because everyone will push to make it behave in their best interests. It's too late to say "I'm going to build a better crypto with features I desire, and 99% of people will disagree because they won't abandon Bitcoin unless it satisfies all of their personal needs with none of the extra stuff.

That's my take on it, at least.

I don´t think it will have a significant impact on alts. Most of them already have a solid plan to compete in speed with Bitcoin and have plenty f room to grow nowadays.

IMO, Bitcoin price should rise after lighting is launched. I don’t think it will affect altcoin prices to go down. Most likely altcoin prices should rise with bitcoin.

if it comes and if they really can provide better services like better transaction fee and speed it is going to have negative effects on some projects. becausethere are so many projects that says they are faster, have larger network size and lower fees etc.

I have heard that a team of independent developers is developing lightening network that will reault in soeedy and cheap transactions for btc and they are already testing the prosuct, i hope they will open the product for public testing soon so that lightening network can be launched and used from this year fully operational.