BOLT Labs Raises $1.5 Million for Lightning Privacy

[pushups44]

The Lightning Network continues to attract significant funding to improve the protocol and add new features such as privacy.

https://www.coindesk.com/bolt-labs-raises-1-5-million-seed-round-to-boost-lightning-privacy

Bolt Labs just raised $1.5 million and aims to improve privacy using the BOLT protocol. It is led by academic researcher Dr. Ayo Akinyele.

[Haunebu]

Outstanding news. Thank you for sharing such positive news on a regular basis op. The lightning network will develop quickly(bugs being ironed out etc) at this rate bringing it closer to a fully developed feature which is just what Bitcoin needs to push adoption at a faster pace.

[okala]

Great new to see that lightening network is having found to enhance the features of the young development many users have find it hard to use lightening network to carry out financial transactions due to it high technicalities. I hope the network willake the network safe for all of us to use in the future.

[pushups44]

Outstanding news. Thank you for sharing such positive news on a regular basis op. The lightning network will develop quickly(bugs being ironed out etc) at this rate bringing it closer to a fully developed feature which is just what Bitcoin needs to push adoption at a faster pace.

Yes, it is good news. One of the signs of the health of a protocol is how much funding is backing it, especially in this type of market. Several projects specifically tailored to Lightning development have raised over a million to several million dollars.

[Ailmand]

I guess their intention is to develop a private and secured cryptocurrency channel and it's great news. A lot of us will benefit this kind of implementation. Knowing that they're developing the features and security, I believe that our information is well protected this time.

[jdarren]

This is huge and I look forward to seeing both the scalability and adoption over time

[DreamStage]

Holy moly this is so cool, i am glad im seeing more stuff like this coming out latest days.
I was also wondering where another price rise was coming from. Maybe it was from this big raise as a trigger to investors.
Hoping for more news like these from Lightning network

[traderethereum]

I think BOLT protocol is for Zcash and not bitcoin because it mentions in here:

Furthermore, Electronic Coin Company CEO Zooko Wilcox is advising Bolt Labs and helping the startup create its first proof-of-concept this summer for the privacy coin zcash, which doesn’t use lightning like bitcoin.

And here:

In order to be activated on the cryptocurrency, new code would need to be added to the zcash repository, in what is called a “soft fork” — or a type of change that doesn’t require all versions of the software to update.

Here is the links for the second quote:

https://www.coindesk.com/the-code-for-an-anonymous-lightning-network-is-now-live

In the end of the article, he conclude this:

And not only that, but going forward, Akinyele feels that BOLT could provide a private link between zcash, bitcoin and litecoin — a layer-two interoperability that he hopes could dismantle some of the tribalism that occurs in cryptocurrency today.

He concluded:

“It provides an option to figure out how we can get away from ‘this currency does this, this currency does that,’ and just start thinking more longer term and big picture with how we want to use these currencies in the real world.”

Which mean, there could be a private link between three coins or something like that.

But maybe I am wrong.

Besides of Zcash, I see it's related to XRP too.

[franky1]

LN is a separate network. and bitcoin had to change to be LN compatible (not the other way round)

LN will use many tricks and concepts and that includes ones from other networks because LN is NOT a bitcoin network
LN is a independant network for HTLC pegged tokens of any compatible coin

so if bolts uses zcash or xrp concepts. then if those concepts go beyond LN's HTLC and try to mess with broadcastable CLTV tx's then the compatible coins would need to change to, to be able to accept the changes.

again LN is not a unique feature for/of bitcoin

also. here is a funny thing. privacy is very cheap. its simple. just dont ask for personal info when coding requests.. its actually more expensive and time consuming to be antiprivacy because then you have to code in features like asking for ID and otherstuff

EG.. just balance info.
want balance info of routes to be private.. fine. just dont code an api call asking for balance info. then no on will know

[okala]

Am very optimistic that lightening network will solve the problem of high fee when the bitcoin price will skyrocket and with what we witness in 2017 pro to the steady rise of the bitcoin market Price up to $20000 market price at December 2017 the fee for sending bitcoin was as high as $30 sending fee of $100 worth of bitcoin. But with the lightening network all this will be solve.

[Kakmakr]

The Lightning Network with privacy features might be a stumbling block for it's adoption. Governments do not like anything with 100% privacy and they will do anything to stop it. They will react negatively towards Bitcoin or any Crypto currency or off-chain solution that adds 100% privacy.

Why should we bother? Well, they can target centralized services with their regulations and these centralized services are exchanges and wallet providers and they can be forced not to allow Bitcoin with the LN, if it is 100% anonymous. 

[kryptqnick]

I think BOLT protocol is for Zcash and not bitcoin because it mentions in here:

Furthermore, Electronic Coin Company CEO Zooko Wilcox is advising Bolt Labs and helping the startup create its first proof-of-concept this summer for the privacy coin zcash, which doesn’t use lightning like bitcoin.

Yeah, it seems that you are right. Like some said, the Lightning network is not Bitcoin. And BOLT Labs can develop stuff for other cryptocurrencies as well which is what they are probably doing now. I have nothing against such a move or against ZCash, but it's not a reason to get excited about Bitcoin getting more popular with this LN add-on. I also remember that this team already made some controversial decisions. It was about Lightning loop, charging fees and not allowing healthy competition: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5123093.msg50254176#msg50254176. So far I've never used the LN even though the fees sound amazing. I am not sure what to make of this project.

[Beerwizzard]

Emm... Why should we even care for LN extra privacy? Lightning network is designed to allow users to perform micro payments in the offline shops fast without waiting for any confirmations.  So it would look just like cash with the same amount of privacy but it won't be able to send it to the other user because he can't open a channel.
It is as private as cash, what else do you need and for what purposes do you want to use LN features combined with extra privacy?

[Carlton Banks]

Emm... Why should we even care for LN extra privacy?

Lightning transactions are already pretty private.

This looks alot like PR to push this new company's brand name, never even heard of Bolt labs until today

[Beerwizzard]

Emm... Why should we even care for LN extra privacy?

Lightning transactions are already pretty private.

This looks alot like PR to push this new company's brand name, never even heard of Bolt labs until today

Sure. It seems like Xzibit is trying to pimp the shitcoin when a coin (or in our case a service or feature, however it could be called) that is already private supposed to become even more private. And then someone would make a fork of this shitcoin that would be even more private etc.
The funniest thing is that most people don't need more privacy then we have with BTC and LN but all this spam makes them think that this is something serious.

[pushups44]

Emm... Why should we even care for LN extra privacy?

Lightning transactions are already pretty private.

This looks alot like PR to push this new company's brand name, never even heard of Bolt labs until today

Who's to say that the supposed privacy of Lightning won't be cracked at some point? There could be a theoretical vulnerability that the academic researcher is aware of, and he may be taking proactive steps to add additional layering of privacy.

[franky1]

people can create lots of code to encrypt balance value so that only those intended to read the data can see it.. but then a simple spam session can counter it

EG
imagine a channel was transparent a[$20:$20]b[$10:$0]c
then imagine some company employed a cryptologist
imagine a channel was encrypted a[e5qd:e5qd]b[c2hj:a1pg]c

people would be like WOW theres no way for A to know what B has to give C
well
A could just spam
a: 'can i pay C $1' b:'yes'
a: 'can i pay C $3' b:'yes'
a: 'can i pay C $6' b:'yes'
a: 'can i pay C $9' b:'yes'
a: 'can i pay C $12' b:'no'
a: 'can i pay C $11' b:'no'
a: 'can i pay C $10' b:'yes'

now A knows that c2hj=$10