{"id":22323,"date":"2018-04-06T20:31:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T20:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe66500f26c3"},"modified":"2018-04-06T20:31:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T20:31:19","slug":"first-lightning-network-wallet-app-now-available-google-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/first-lightning-network-wallet-app-now-available-google-play","title":{"rendered":"First Lightning Network Wallet App Now Available via Google Play"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Lightning Network\u2019s first mobile app for Bitcoin\u2019s mainnet is now available<\/a> through Google Play. Known as the Eclair Wallet, the app was released on April 4, 2018, via French technology startup ACINQ, and is being offered specifically to Android users.<\/p>\n

Devices employing software version 5.0 or higher can send Lightning payments, which require significantly lower fees than the standard Bitcoin network. Transactions also happen much faster compared to on-chain confirmations. <\/p>\n

Describing the new product on GitHub<\/a>, ACINQ wrote: <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Eclair Wallet is a next-generation, Lightning-ready Bitcoin wallet. It can be used as a regular Bitcoin wallet, and can also connect to the Lightning Network for cheap and instant payments. This software is based upon eclair [another Lightning implementation], and follows the Lightning Network standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The product\u2019s release marks the latest in a long list of items that have come by way of the Lightning Network over the past several weeks. In March, for example, the protocol\u2019s \u201cfirst Lightning mainnet release,\u201d known as Ind 0.4-beta<\/a>, went live to widespread acclaim. Several other new tools have since entered the market by way of private developers, and an upcoming beta known as c-lightning is expected to be available relatively soon<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Lightning Network on Bitcoin is made possible in part due to<\/a> Segregated Witness, the protocol upgrade that activated on Bitcoin last summer. The app\u2019s popularity has also inspired users to request an iOS edition of the product. <\/p>\n

The wallet does, however, come with certain<\/a> limitations. According to a description written by ACINQ, \u201cLightning channels are outbound only: you can pay with LN but you cannot receive or forward payments with this wallet.\u201d It further states that if users wish to enjoy the full LN experience, they are advised to run a full Eclair node. <\/p>\n

The Lightning Network is described as a \u201cpeer-to-peer system\u201d working as a \u201csecond-layer payment protocol\u201d leveraging the security of Bitcoin\u2019s blockchain to process (micro)payments. The Network\u2019s scalability should allow it to process millions to billions of transactions per second across the network. <\/p>\n

Founded in 2014, ACINQ is based<\/a> in Paris, and seeks to build \u201cproducts and services for the Bitcoin ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Eclair Wallet is a next-generation, Lightning-ready Bitcoin wallet. It can be used as a regular Bitcoin wallet, and can also connect to the Lightning Network for cheap and instant payments.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3479,"featured_media":22324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2706,460,780],"class_list":{"0":"post-22323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-acinq","9":"tag-lightning-network","10":"tag-wallet"},"author_data":{"id":3479,"name":"Nick Marinoff","nicename":"nick-marinoff","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/cropped-bitcoin-schmitcoin-promo-image-1-2-96x96.png"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/first-lightning-network-wallet-app-now-available-via-google-play.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22323","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\/3479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}