{"id":12019,"date":"2022-01-12T13:24:40","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T13:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02971923400026ae"},"modified":"2022-01-12T13:24:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T13:24:40","slug":"inside-spiral-jack-dorseys-bitcoin-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/inside-spiral-jack-dorseys-bitcoin-company","title":{"rendered":"How Spiral, Jack Dorsey\u2019s Rebranded Bitcoin Company, Is Accelerating Adoption"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jack Dorsey\u2019s popular financial company Square went through a recent rebrand and is now called Block<\/a>. The move led one of its subsidiaries, Square Crypto, to also take up a fresh name. Now known as Spiral, Block\u2019s Bitcoin company has set out on a well-defined mission: to advance Bitcoin toward worldwide use.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s In A Name?<\/h2>\n

In its rebranding statement<\/a>, Spiral noted that its original name had never fit it well. The inclusion of its parent company\u2019s former name within its own led people to believe the connection between the two was stronger than it actually was, and this caused confusion around Square Crypto\u2019s independence. Furthermore, the presence of \u201ccrypto\u201d misrepresented its mission, the company said, since it is focused solely on Bitcoin. Spiral also alludes to Bitcoin as it continues to grow \u201clike a spiral from a single point, encompassing more and more space until it touches everything,\u201d per a Square tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite coming under the umbrella of Block, Spiral operates completely independently of its parent company. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block and ex-CEO of Twitter, has little direct control over Spiral. The company\u2019s lead, Steve Lee, told Bitcoin Magazine <\/em>in a recent interview that \u201cSpiral decides how our team runs, what we work on, and how resources are spent,\u201d not Block or Dorsey.<\/p>\n

The Road To Adoption, Paved By Developers<\/h2>\n

Spiral\u2019s sole goal is to enable Bitcoin to touch everything. Lee said that Spiral seeks to accelerate the adoption of Bitcoin by facilitating the work of developers building applications that interact with the monetary network. Ultimately, he explained, that can lead to better experiences for the end user \u2014 an essential factor for reaching high adoption rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiral can accelerate adoption by creating development tools and infrastructure which make it easier for people to build better user experiences, make the network more secure, access better tools, and increase privacy,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

Even among those who are relatively open to adopting it, bitcoin is seen by many as solely digital gold, an enhanced version of the world\u2019s most sought-after metal that can be sent and received through the internet while retaining its owner\u2019s purchasing power. But many Bitcoiners disagree with that limited view and instead envision the peer-to-peer asset being scaled in a layered approach to become a worldwide currency, something Spiral also believes in and is dedicated to helping Bitcoin achieve through the Lightning Network.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur long-term goal is to make bitcoin a useful everyday currency for people around the world,\u201d Lee said. \u201cAdoption of bitcoin naturally starts with ownership, but the endpoint is daily use as a currency.\u201d<\/p>\n

By developing libraries and tools to help developers implement Bitcoin and Lightning functionality to their apps, Spiral hopes it can make bitcoin\u2019s use as currency more feasible for people around the world. That is already a reality in places like El Salvador<\/a>, but in many others, citizens still struggle to leverage Lightning as a proper scaling tool, an issue that might be rooted in the technology\u2019s implementation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost every Lightning wallet and application needs its own customizations to nail the user experience,\u201d Lee said. \u201cHistorically, it hasn\u2019t been a developer-friendly process, and it\u2019s a problem for mobile applications in particular because they tend to need more customization. It\u2019s harder to deliver the UX people expect on mobile in terms of privacy, security and performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

This problem has prompted the company to work on a development kit for Lightning, LDK, which takes care of the more difficult aspects of the technology and frees developers\u2019 bandwidth to focus on the end user\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith LDK, developers don\u2019t have to modify the underlying Lightning network implementation, and they don\u2019t need to familiarize themselves with a different programming language or be experts on the Lightning protocol,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

LDK abstracts low-level concepts of Lightning development to enable easier integration of Bitcoin\u2019s scaling protocol. By abstracting the networking and database interfaces, for instance, LDK allows developers to run LDK inside a browser that requires WebSockets and to enjoy more flexibility when it comes to storing and managing Lightning state data.<\/p>\n

\u201cLDK even allows developers to provide their own custom peer scoring, customize the payment preimage generation and create custom channel scripts,\u201d Lee added.<\/p>\n

A scaling technology is dependent on a reliable and effective base layer. Besides its work on Lightning, Spiral also is devising a development kit geared toward Bitcoin\u2019s base layer, the Bitcoin Development Kit.<\/p>\n

\u201cBDK is very similar in concept to LDK \u2014 it can be thought of as a sibling project,\u201d Lee explained. \u201cBDK helps developers build the on-chain portions of a wallet, while LDK focuses on Layer 2. The combination of BDK and LDK makes any wallet intended to scale to millions of users dramatically easier to build.\u201d<\/p>\n

Building In The Future<\/h2>\n

Something that is easier to build also can in theory be more easily tested and patched. Part of Spiral\u2019s focus lies in helping make that a reality, and the company intends to double the number of full-time developers working with them next year to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n

Another facet of Spiral\u2019s mission and work relates to funding other open-source Bitcoin projects. Spiral\u2019s grant program was designed to empower developers, designers, and other contributors with the resources they need to improve Bitcoin\u2019s privacy, security, UX and ability to scale, according to Lee. Anyone interested in being paid to work on Bitcoin full time can apply to do so on Spiral’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In addition to making tangible, direct contributions to the Bitcoin ecosystem, Spiral also hopes to inspire similar organizations to be born and further add to the open-source mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn ten years, we hope to have inspired ten more like us, with their own flavor and style, contributing to open-source Bitcoin development,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lead of Spiral, the Bitcoin-focused company formerly known as Square Crypto, explains the group\u2019s rebranding, mission and future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2572,"featured_media":10844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1589,337,422,681,1460,1087,2629,2630],"class_list":{"0":"post-12019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bdk","9":"tag-development","10":"tag-feature","11":"tag-jack-dorsey","12":"tag-ldk","13":"tag-spiral","14":"tag-square-crypto","15":"tag-steve-lee"},"author_data":{"id":2572,"name":"Namcios","nicename":"namcios","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/pfp-96x96.png"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/cybersecurity-firm-reports-all-fortune-500-companies-exposed-on-the-dark-web.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2572"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}