Jack Dorsey-Backed Lightning Labs Raises $10 Million

[hugeblack]

Lightning Labs has received about $ 10 million to expand its payment network that allows companies and individuals to spend bitcoins in everyday life that require low fees and very low confirmation times.
In addition to the capital increase, they launched a service called Lightning Loop  sorry for that.

In general, the article attempts to link Bitcoin, LN, with the concept of visa and traditional financial system.

Building on a seed round from Square founder Jack Dorsey, Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev, and Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, among others, Craft Ventures led the round, with a who’s who of traditional investors participating, including Howard Morgan, former global co-head of securities at Goldman Sachs, John Pfeffer, formally of KKR, and Forbes 30 Under 30 alum Jill Carlson of Slow Ventures, and formerly a trader at Goldman Sachs.

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[OgNasty]

In addition to the capital increase, they launched a service called Lightning Lube.

   Umm...  That can't be the actual name, right?

[rdbase]

In addition to the capital increase, they launched a service called Lightning Lube.

   Umm...  That can't be the actual name, right?

It is actually lightning loop.
When I started to do a search for lightning l..., it shows some pretty gross stuff. Then continued typing jack dorsey then I got to the right link.

"In addition to the capital raise, Palo Alto-based Lightning Labs today launched its first financial services product, Lightning Loop, to monetize the so-called “layer-two” technology that sits on top of the bitcoin blockchain by making it easier for startups to accept the cryptocurrency. With traditional bitcoin payments firms like Bitpay and Coinbase making significant headwinds in cryptocurrency payments using more traditional technology, the one-two punch of fundraising and a product launch using the more efficient Lightning is a positive sign for the network’s adoption."
From op's link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/02/05/jack-dorsey-backed-lightning-labs-raises-10-million-to-build-visa-network-for-bitcoin
 

[nelson4lov]

That's great news. I knew Jack's interest in Bitcoin would yield some really nice results. Just few weeks ago, he was in Africa holding a bitcoin meetup, today, He's backing LN and supporting Bitcoin to go global. I have a good feeling that Mass adoption would be coming sooner than initially anticipated. Although a lot of people don't agree that Lightening Network is the solution to Bitcoin's bottleneck tx woes but I feel this might work. That said, let's say how Lightening Network moves on from here now that there's additional funding.

Yet another Bitcoin win 🕺

[stompix]

 Umm...  That can't be the actual name, right?

It is actually lightning loop.

My initial bet went on "lube" > "tube", but yeah loop sounds ...better?  Does it?

I know this is good for the crypto environment, I know that moving transactions to the LN is good, but whenever I hear companies throwing millions, and sometimes hundreds of mils in those project I can't shake a bad feeling about it.
It's like bitmain, they manufacture miners, more miners means less chance of an attack but at the same time...bitmain..d'oh!

Seems like they know what some people like me are wondering:

“People think: ‘lightning is open source, how can you make money off of it?’” she says. “But really we’re building a new type of financial network for financial markets, which has all these interesting possibilities.”.....
While Stark declined to share details about the other financial products in development, she added that the company will be working to integrate Wumbo functionality, code named after a bit in Sponge Bob Square Pants, which promises to increase the transaction capacity of each Lightning channel from about .167 bitcoin or about $1,500, paving the way for a whole range of financial products.

Anyhow, what I wish for is a utopia, sooner or later we will have a corporation and "new types" of financial institutions in every aspect of bitcoin.

[Twinkledoe]

 Umm...  That can't be the actual name, right?

It is actually lightning loop.

My initial bet went on "lube" > "tube", but yeah loop sounds ...better?  Does it?

I know this is good for the crypto environment, I know that moving transactions to the LN is good, but whenever I hear companies throwing millions, and sometimes hundreds of mils in those project I can't shake a bad feeling about it.
It's like bitmain, they manufacture miners, more miners means less chance of an attack but at the same time...bitmain..d'oh!

Seems like they know what some people like me are wondering:

“People think: ‘lightning is open source, how can you make money off of it?’” she says. “But really we’re building a new type of financial network for financial markets, which has all these interesting possibilities.”.....
While Stark declined to share details about the other financial products in development, she added that the company will be working to integrate Wumbo functionality, code named after a bit in Sponge Bob Square Pants, which promises to increase the transaction capacity of each Lightning channel from about .167 bitcoin or about $1,500, paving the way for a whole range of financial products.

Anyhow, what I wish for is a utopia, sooner or later we will have a corporation and "new types" of financial institutions in every aspect of bitcoin.

But using Lightning Lube is good for marketing purposes. They can draw attention and people will be curious about it.  It is time to shine for the LN and reach out more users. I am with this project! Hope they can really deliver their mission as they already have the funds in place.

[Kemarit]

Here is the official Github repo for those who want to see it: https://github.com/lightninglabs/loop

And here is the official blog post: https://blog.lightning.engineering/announcement/2020/02/05/loop-beta.html. So that we won't get "lost in translation". 

For those who want to try their beta:

Try Beta Today

Lightning Loop Beta is available on the command line using the reference Go client, and APIs are available for the Go client and for direct integration.

If you are working on integrating Lightning Loop in your application or trying it out for your service, we want to hear about it, so please email us or join our community Slack to give feedback, get help, or ask questions.

Advancements in the Bitcoin and Lightning protocols will allow for far more efficient submarine swaps, and ongoing adjustments to the swap execution are also in-development so stay tuned for cheaper, faster, and more private Loop functionality.

[hugeblack]

In addition to the capital increase, they launched a service called Lightning Lube.

  Umm...  That can't be the actual name, right?
[/quote]
Sorry, I was talking to a friend when I wrote this topic so the words 😂😂 overlapped.
The entire article aims to make a comparison between the visa and the Bitcoin visa layer (LN.)

[davis196]

Perhaps there will be a division between BTC core blockchain and all the second layer solutions (LN and other offchain solutions).LN and side-chains will be used mainly for retail purchases/online shopping,where lightning fast confirmation time is preferred,while the traditional BTC blockchain will be used for "investment" transactions only,which means that only the Bitcoin traders and investors will use it to send and receive BTC.
Maybe this is how Jack Dorsey sees the future of Bitcoin...

[franky1]

in short Lightning labs wants to be the custodial FACTORY/WATCHTOWER business model. letting its users have offchain balance that lightning labs has power over.

bitcoin (yea bitcoin) doesnt have or need intermeiaries.
LN is not a layer of bitcoin.
LN is a separate network that MANY altcoins can use. its not a feature/added benefit unique to bitcoin.

if people actually stopped hyping up LN by bzzwording it beside bitcoin. yet it holds no of the unique features or benefits of bitcoin. then people would see how LN is just some commercial crap to grab peoples money for corporate profit.

[DeathAngel]

He may have personal, financial goals from his actions but Jack Dorsey really is pro BTC. I can’t fault his efforts to force BTC down the throats of average joe. Mainstream adoption is a lot more likely with people like him pushing.

[1Referee]

if people actually stopped hyping up LN by bzzwording it beside bitcoin. yet it holds no of the unique features or benefits of bitcoin. then people would see how LN is just some commercial crap to grab peoples money for corporate profit.

You make it seem like the whole space is hyping up Lightning, which definitely isn't the case. In fact, I have seen more people on social media platforms speak out against Lightning.

I am excited about Lightning, but also acknowledge the fact that it by far can't provide the same level of security as the main chain, but that's not even the point. Lightning's main purpose is to facilitate micro payments where security isn't that much of a concern. The benefits of instant and near free payments greatly outweighs the risks people using Lightning are exposed to.

Also, Lightning is just one second layer. I'm confident that it will be one of the many in 5-10 years where people can choose what layer they use.

[franky1]

if people actually stopped hyping up LN by bzzwording it beside bitcoin. yet it holds no of the unique features or benefits of bitcoin. then people would see how LN is just some commercial crap to grab peoples money for corporate profit.

You make it seem like the whole space is hyping up Lightning, which definitely isn't the case. In fact, I have seen more people on social media platforms speak out against Lightning.

I am excited about Lightning, but also acknowledge the fact that it by far can't provide the same level of security as the main chain, but that's not even the point. Lightning's main purpose is to facilitate micro payments where security isn't that much of a concern. The benefits of instant and near free payments greatly outweighs the risks people using Lightning are exposed to.

Also, Lightning is just one second layer. I'm confident that it will be one of the many in 5-10 years where people can choose what layer they use.

by your own wording it shows the hyping up
yousay that LN is not as strong as the main chain. but just look how you wrote it and think of it. you think that they are linked and part of each other.. especially with your extra words calling it a second layer.

LN IS NOT IN ANYWAY BITCOIN!!!!!!!
its a separate network
it has tokens of 12 decimals
it has no blockchain
it does not rely on community oversight/storage/checking

LN is not a sole feature of bitcoin. its not even a unique feature only for bitcoin
LN is not bitcoin

LN is a commercial service for many coins and is just using the fame of bitcoin

by shouting out the word layer makes you stupidly try to associate LN with bitcoin.. thus making noobs think because bitcoin is safe LN is safe.

sorry LN should not be assiociated with bitcoin and definetly should not be promoted as a bitcoin solution/feature

it has taken a few years for people to wise up that custodial services like exchanges are not bitcoin. and should not be treated as part of bitcoin. but treated as a custodial service.
but even now still stupid people think custodial services are bitcoiin
(take peter schiff's recent dumbness blaming bitcoin for his lack of understanding of how a custodial service works)


LN needs to back off the bitcoin waggon and stop stealing the 'trust' and security of bitcoin by pretending LN is in anyway like bitcoin

i dont min promoters saying LN is a cryptocurrency gateway network for fast payments. but trying to say its not a gateway but infact the same property/ land of bitcoin is stretching the truth a lil wide

LN is not bitcoin nor is it a layer or a feature of bitcoin
i got no problem with anyone wanting to have convenient ways to make money but to try making bitcoin itself harder and more expensive to use. and to make it appear as if bitcoin is broken purely to fame up another network like LN is shameful on many levels.

LN is not bitcoin
bitcoins features stop at locking a transaction into a block with a time limit
other networks can then create their own tokens pegged to the lock but that does not make them that currency it just makes them a pretend currency

i do find it funny how people still think  LN is bitcoin an can make bitcoin great.. yet not letting bitcoin expand while trying to divert people onto those other networks that are not bitcoin but pretend to be

[Carlton Banks]

Also, Lightning is just one second layer. I'm confident that it will be one of the many in 5-10 years where people can choose what layer they use.

right

Lightning is just Bitcoin transactions that use the built-in scripting language to make a contract enforced by Bitcoin's blockchain (and then many of these contracts are daisy-chained together such that they work together as a payments network between all of the individual parties to the contracts).

so there's no reason why the same scripting language (or some new feature added to the language) cannot be used to define a different type of contract that can be used to form a different payment network that is better than Lightning. You could say that this has already happened, as there are evolved versions of the Lightning style of contract that are currently in proposal form, whether we call them Lightning 2.0 (or whatever name) is a bit meaningless really

[NotATether]

“People think: ‘lightning is open source, how can you make money off of it?’” she says. “But really we’re building a new type of financial network for financial markets, which has all these interesting possibilities.”.....
While Stark declined to share details about the other financial products in development, she added that the company will be working to integrate Wumbo functionality, code named after a bit in Sponge Bob Square Pants, which promises to increase the transaction capacity of each Lightning channel from about .167 bitcoin or about $1,500, paving the way for a whole range of financial products.

(Italics emphasis mine)

Uh, no, commercializing the Lightning Network would be a terrible idea. We must keep LN decentralized so stop large greedy corporations from controlling the fees.

“We’re building the Visa network for bitcoin,” says Stark. “But what I think is powerful, is unlike Visa, anybody can build on top of it.”

I don't think we want a Visa network for bitcoin itself. This feels like they are taking LN and trying to shoehorn it on top of the bitcoin network. As franky1 said, LN has nothing to do with bitcoin.

And we all know what happened when people tried to increase the block size in an attempt to make bitcoin faster.

LN's supposed to be a way to validate your payment quickly hence the Lightning part of the name, but the group of nodes they are building will selectively choose which of everyone else's nodes to make a channel with cause there is corporate oversight dictating what they should be doing. Remember there are only 11,000 nodes and who knows how many nodes they will set up.

And if they become large enough they can attempt to force some of the other nodes with a legal document not to make LN channels with other nodes. So I think that corporations have no business touching Lightning Network. Please make money off of something else and leave development to the community.

Last month a team of five people working at payments giant Square’s crypto offices announced it was working on its own developer kit to make it easier to build on Lightning.

LN isn't even ready yet and if they think "anybody can build on top of it ", why aren't they contributing to LN codebase to make it production ready?

[franky1]

But it does solve the problem age old coffee on the blockchain dilemma now though doesn't it? We don't need every single single small transaction on the blockchain, we can just group them up and do them as larger transactions worthy of being on the blockchain. Luckily the user has the choice to decide if it's worth a risk of using ln or if it's something they don't want to risk and just do a standard Bitcoin transaction, I don't see too much of an issue here at all. Lightning is not Bitcoin but that's okay, it gives some extra utility for those willing to make concessions and fall into certain use cases.

firstly LN is not bitcoin.. yep worth emphasising every time i post on the topic
secondly.

LN is not a robust consumer ready payment network
LN is just a tool for many currencies. not just the bitcoin network and again it just is not bitcoin

i can live with people describing it as a visa for cryptocurrency just like visa is for fiat. but trying to say visa is fiat and LN is bitcoin.. is just nonsense

LN is much more vulnerable than even visa. heck its more vulnerable than having a joint bank account with your spouse
it also requires alot more crap involved to make it resemble reliable function like factories and watch towers.

i found so many flaws in LN when i tested it. that i gave up even trying to hint at some of the issues that needed addressing.
by the way. even the LN devs know some flaws so dont even try to say im just bias against it

im all for having something to make consumers life easier. but not at the price of tarnishing bitcoins status.
trying to call out that bitcoin is broken/flawed and people should use LN instead is the opposite of reality.

but my main gripe is pretending an inferior network is part of bitcoin.. just makes me feel those promoting it just want some buzzword recognition for greed. and dont actually care much to actually do anything positive for bitcoin(the real bitcoin network)

[DooMAD]

firstly LN is not bitcoin.. yep worth emphasising every time i post on the topic

Given that you been banned from posting in the Development and Technical section of the boards because you are renowned for spouting misleading nonsense, it might worth considering that your opinions on what is or isn't Bitcoin carry very little weight here. 

Keep repeating it as often as you like, every time you post. 
We'll keep pointing out that you're a malicious troll, every time you post.

i can live with people describing it as a visa for cryptocurrency just like visa is for fiat.

You can live with people describing Lightning in a totally misleading and incorrect fashion?  Hmm.... no surprises there! 
It's almost as though you are encouraging people to spread misinformation to suit your lame propaganda war.   Pity you're losing.   

LN is just a tool for many currencies. not just the bitcoin network and again it just is not bitcoin

Exchanges are a tool for many currencies, do we have your approval to talk about those here on the forum? 
WebWallets are a tool for many currencies, do we have your approval to talk about those here on the forum? 
Payment Processors are a tool for many currencies, do we have your approval to talk about those here on the forum?

There are advantages and disadvantages to using those tools.  LN is no different.  But the simple fact is that you can use Lightning to make a transaction that results in you transferring the ownership of your BTC to an intended recipient.  There is absolutely no reason why we can't discuss doing so here.  Whine about it all you like, but there is nothing you can do to stop it.

[hatshepsut93]

Anyhow, what I wish for is a utopia, sooner or later we will have a corporation and "new types" of financial institutions in every aspect of bitcoin.

Well, you can't have a free market and no corporation/financial institutions at the same time. Like, shortly after Bitcoin itself was created, centralized exchanges started emerging and now they hold a significant portion of supply and serve as gateway for many users. And we can't do anything about it on a protocol level, our best bet is to preach to newcomers and casuals how bad centralized companies are and that they should use decentralized alternatives.

[franky1]

Exchanges are a tool for many currencies, do we have your approval to talk about those here on the forum?  
WebWallets are a tool for many currencies, do we have your approval to talk about those here on the forum?  
Payment Processors are a tool for many currencies, do we have your approval to talk about those here on the forum?

There are advantages and disadvantages to using those tools.  LN is no different.  But the simple fact is that you can use Lightning to make a transaction that results in you transferring the ownership of your BTC to an intended recipient.  There is absolutely no reason why we can't discuss doing so here.  Whine about it all you like, but there is nothing you can do to stop it.

point people are trying to describe LN AS BITCOIN
is like saying EXCHANGES ARE BITCOIN
is like saying RIPPLE IS BITCOIN
is like saying VISA IS DOLLAR

sorry it aint.
LN is 12 decimal. LN has no blockchain. LN has no miners. LN is NOT bitcoin
funny thing is many altcoins have more things very similar to bitcoin yet you are the one very quick to call them out as not bitcoin.
yet something without  blockchain without mining without decentralised peer review of all transactions.. ou want to associate as bitcoin.

LN is broke. sorry but its not a consumer ready tool. so stop selling it as if its the same thing and should be treated as good as or treated better than bitcoin.
atleast take your fanboy desires for greedy riches out of your opinions and think of what people should know about what is truly bitcoin and what is a separate tool.

LN is not a sole unique feature for utility for only bitcoin. so drop treating it as a bitcoin buzzword. its actually harming bitcoins rep every time people lose funds on LN
(yep people do lose funds and yep even LN devs have.. which shows how broke it is)
LN does not deserve bitcoins fame and bitcoin should not give LN fame

[DooMAD]

funny thing is many altcoins have more things very similar to bitcoin yet you are the one very quick to call them out as not bitcoin.
yet something without  blockchain without mining without decentralised peer review of all transactions.. ou want to associate as bitcoin.

Because people are primarily using LN to move BTC.  What you or I want to associate anything with is irrelevant.  People are USING it FOR their BITCOIN.

LTC Lightning has somehow dropped to a paltry ~220 nodes.

And 1ml.com seemingly can't even be bothered to track Vertcoin's usage anymore because it's apparently so insignificant.

Groestlcoin has 7 LN nodes.  And at least 3 of those look like the dev team.  Good luck finding someone you might need to pay on there.

So keep talking about all the "other coins" you can supposedly use Lightning with, but (as always) here in the real world (i.e. not your fantasy world of make-believe where you can't accept reality) it's not going to be very easy to make a payment using those other coins.  Learn network effects.