{"id":27255,"date":"2015-05-29T20:35:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T20:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe7b40012697"},"modified":"2015-05-29T20:35:28","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T20:35:28","slug":"blockstream-starts-development-lightning-network-1432931728","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/blockstream-starts-development-lightning-network-1432931728","title":{"rendered":"Blockstream Starts Development on the Lightning Network"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The authors of the much-discussed Bitcoin Sidechains paper \u201cEnabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains<\/a>,\u201d released in October, have formed the company Blockstream<\/a> to develop new ways to accelerate innovation in digital currencies, open assets and smart contracts. In November, Blockstream closed a $21 million seed funding round<\/a> with nearly 40 investors, including well-known pioneers of the Internet and financial services sectors.<\/p>\n

The Bitcoin Sidechains paper envisages an ecosystem of \u201csidechains\u201d separate from the main Bitcoin blockchain but interoperable with it. A sidechain can carry bitcoin as currency, in which case users will be able to seamlessly transfer bitcoin between the sidechain and the main blockchain. At the same time, the sidechain can implement changes from Bitcoin Core. For example, a sidechain can implement more powerful scripting features or more watertight privacy.<\/p>\n

For a readable explanation of sidechains, see \u201cA simple explanation of Bitcoin \u2018Sidechains<\/a>,\u201d by Richard Gendal Brown<\/a>, executive architect for banking innovation at IBM UK.<\/p>\n

\u201c[A]t any point, whoever is holding these coins on the sidechain can send them back to the Bitcoin network by creating a special transaction on the sidechain that immobilizes the bitcoins on the sidechain,\u201d explains Gendal Brown. \u201cThey\u2019ll disappear from the sidechain and become available again on the Bitcoin network, under the control of whoever last owned them on the sidechain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deployment of sidechains interoperable with Bitcoin requires the implementation of suitable hooks in Bitcoin Core. That will inevitably take some time, but it\u2019s worth noting that some Blockstream team members are also Bitcoin Core developers.<\/p>\n

In February, developers Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja released a first draft version another much-discussed paper, proposing a decentralized Bitcoin Lightning Network<\/a> where related transactions can take place instantly on \u201cmicropayment channels\u201d off-chain, and only the final settlement is processed by the blockchain. According to the authors, lightning networks would enable bitcoin scalability, efficient micropayments, and near-instant transactions.<\/p>\n

The implementation of lightning networks would also require appropriate tweaks to Bitcoin core. Some developers have noted that there is a certain degree of affinity between sidechains and lightning networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther approaches seek to modify Bitcoin protocols in various ways,\u201d wrote<\/a> Robert McGrath. \u201cFor example, Sidechains aim to create alternative blockchains hanging off the main blockchain, which would help limit the costs of the main blockchain. Another variant is the Lightning network, which aims to allow some transactions to be performed \u201con the side,\u201d and on send the results to the main blockchain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rusty Russell<\/a>, an Australian developer known for his work on the Linux kernel, wrote a series of blog posts<\/a> about interesting features of lightning networks. \u201cThe key revelation of the paper is that we can have a network of arbitrarily complicated transactions, such that they aren\u2019t on the blockchain (and thus are fast, cheap and extremely scalable), but at every point are ready to be dropped onto the blockchain for resolution if there\u2019s a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is genuinely revolutionary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it appears that the development efforts for sidechains and lightning networks are coming together. Russell, who joined Blockstream a few weeks ago<\/a>, is working on lightning networks, and one of his first actions was to set up a Blockstream-hosted mailing list<\/a> for \u201cDiscussion of the development of the Lightning Network, a caching layer for bitcoin.\u201d The new mailing list archives<\/a> are freely accessible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hired me,\u201d Russell said on Reddit<\/a>. \u201cWe agreed I\u2019d be working on developing lightning. I set up a mailing list and am developing a toy prototype to explore the ideas. Will put on github once that\u2019s ready (two weeks?) but it\u2019s a long long way from anything someone could use. I\u2019m excited about lightning, but it\u2019s a marathon, not a sprint.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The authors of the much-discussed Bitcoin Sidechains paper \u201cEnabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains,\u201d released in October, have formed the company Blockstream to develop new ways to accelerate innovation in digital currencies, open assets and smart contracts. In November, Blockstream closed a $21 million seed funding round with nearly 40 investors, including well-known pioneers of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3509,"featured_media":27254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[287,1038,245,3543,460,2018,3244,396,3315,708],"class_list":{"0":"post-27255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-blockstream","9":"tag-core","10":"tag-developers","11":"tag-joseph-poon","12":"tag-lightning-network","13":"tag-networks","14":"tag-rusty-russell","15":"tag-sidechains","16":"tag-tadge-dryja","17":"tag-transactions"},"author_data":{"id":3509,"name":"Giulio Prisco","nicename":"giulio-prisco","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d091b908741b627d89036dd43748bb5c5edcfe9f805501703e2c3af34dadfca?s=96&d=robohash&r=g"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/blockstream-starts-development-on-the-lightning-network.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27255","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\/3509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}