{"id":19889,"date":"2019-06-25T17:06:50","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T17:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe77a00f2697"},"modified":"2019-06-25T17:06:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T17:06:50","slug":"bitrefill-brings-lightning-to-coinbase-with-thorapi-kit-for-exchanges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/bitrefill-brings-lightning-to-coinbase-with-thorapi-kit-for-exchanges","title":{"rendered":"Bitrefill Brings Lightning to Coinbase With ThorAPI Kit for Exchanges"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lightning has come to Coinbase, courtesy of Bitrefill.<\/p>\n

Revealed exclusively to Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>, the new service, known as Recharge, is the latest addition to Bitrefill\u2019s Thor Lightning service<\/a>. With it, Coinbase users will be able to easily leverage the full capabilities of the Lightning Network through their Coinbase accounts. This entails sending on-chain bitcoin from Coinbase to top-off Lightning channels on other services and paying invoices directly from a Coinbase account.<\/p>\n

Outside of Coinbase, the service will also be available through Bitrefill<\/a> for any user \u201c\u00e0 la carte,\u201d Bitrefill COO John Carvalho told Bitcoin Magazine.<\/em> The company envisions other exchanges integrating the service as well.<\/p>\n

Launched earlier this year, Bitrefill\u2019s Thor gives users quick and easy exposure to Bitcoin\u2019s secondary payment network, Lightning. The on-demand service automatically opens a payment channel for you connected to Bitrefill\u2019s Lightning Network node, which in turn provides a routing hub for virtually any other payment channels on the network. <\/p>\n

Thor Turbo, the first product rollout for the service, allows users to leverage Thor immediately without having to wait for on-chain confirmations for the bitcoin they send to Bitrefill to fund their Lightning wallet. The trade-off here is trusting Bitrefill to make good on your transaction, but Carvalho told Bitcoin Magazine <\/em>that it is a chance \u201cto demonstrate that a business with a good reputation has very little incentive not to deliver when a Lightning service is purchased by central means,\u201d concluding by saying it\u2019s a \u201cpurchased access\u201d service, not a custodial one.<\/p>\n

Treading closely behind Thor Turbo\u2019s heels, Recharge is Thor\u2019s second product, and it comes as part of Bitrefill\u2019s new ThorAPI service. As with Coinbase, any exchange can utilize the service to integrate Lightning directly onto their platforms, whether they have endogenous support for it or not. Carvalho told us that he sees the service unlocking an interconnected web of quick, cheap liquidity between exchanges, similar to Blockstream\u2019s Liquid sidechains<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chose to demonstrate this new service by utilizing our pre-existing integration with Coinbase\u2019s API for accounts to show how Bitrefill allows any crypto platform in the world to provide access to the Lightning Network whether they currently support Lightning technology internally or not,\u201d he told Bitcoin Magazine. <\/em>\u201cLightning is about to allow exchanges to collaborate on instantly moving BTC over Lightning and to coordinate on the liquidity needed to make that possible. Soon, you will see major exchanges opening \u2018fat\u2019 or \u2018wumbo\u2019 channels with each other and with Bitrefill to unleash the power of Lightning even further.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wumbo, here, refers to the 1 bitcoin payment channels that Bitrefill has been experimenting with in a bid to push the limits of the Lightning Network \u2014 what Carvalho himself has playfully branded as #Reckless. The reason it is so reckless is that the Lightning Network\u2019s protocol default for payment channels only allows users to fund them with so much bitcoin (roughly 4-5 million satoshis worth). Seeing as Lightning is still a fledgling technology, any more than this limit is seen as flying too close to the sun, \u201cso only people breaking the rules with you can route larger amounts with you,\u201d Carvalho said.<\/p>\n

So, in the future, it\u2019s conceivable that exchanges could open these fat payment channels with each other in order to improve transfer times and costs. In fact, Carvalho revealed that Bitrefill is \u201ccollaborating with several exchanges and Bitcoin-focused businesses to create [this] \u2018subnetwork\u2019\u201d of Lightning channel liquidity, adding that they\u2019ve been focusing heavily on accommodating wumbo channels to get as much mileage as possible out of each channel. <\/p>\n

Carvalho clarified that \u201cthis is not a new partnership with Coinbase,\u201d as Bitrefill\u2019s base API has been integrated into Coinbase for some time, giving Coinbase users instant access to use their accounts at Bitrefill. He continued to say that, given Coinbase\u2019s prominence and \u201clack of official support internally for Lightning services,\u201d this Recharge integration is ideal for showcasing what Bitrefill\u2019s Thor means for the industry\u2019s heaviest hitters.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Coinbase is] one of the largest exchanges in the world and has been historically slow at adding the progressive advancements happening on Bitcoin,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, we pushed things forward for their customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it is a great way to show how, now, any exchange, wallet, or internet-connected platform can integrate with us and have access to Lightning with minimal trust requirements and minimal development overhead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bitrefill CEO Sergej Kotliar demoed the service on the first day of the Bitcoin 2019 conference in San Francisco. In partnership with the conference, Bitcoin Lightning Wallet for Android and Wallet of Satoshi (with which Bitrefill is now natively compatible), Bitrefill gifted each member of the conference $5 of bitcoin in Thor Turbo channels to use at the event\u2019s Lightning-powered arcade, beer garden and food vendors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Bitrefill\u2019s ThorAPI, Coinbase users will be able to easily leverage the full capabilities of the Lightning network through their Coinbase accounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2566,"featured_media":19890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[138,190,357,460],"class_list":["post-19889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technical","tag-bitrefill","tag-coinbase","tag-exchanges","tag-lightning-network"],"author_data":{"id":2566,"name":"Colin Harper","nicename":"colin-harper","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/MjEwMTYzMzc3Njg5ODYzNjQ2-96x96.webp"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/bitrefill-brings-lightning-to-coinbase-with-thorapi-kit.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19889","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\/2566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}