Bitcoin's Lightning Network Moves Closer to Compatibility

Nearly a year after bitcoin's scattered group of Lightning Network developers first gathered to unite their different implementations, the rules they could one day use to connect their technologies are almost complete.

In interviews, those involved with the open-source project (viewed as one of the best ways to bring additional capacity to the nearly $70 billion network), spoke to the new sense of direction provided by bitcoin's recent SegWit upgrade. Still, they also cautioned that, while SegWit lays the foundation for Lightning, standards are needed to connect work that's already been done.

"The specification is mostly complete, with minor amendments and inconsistencies that we are figuring out," said Blockstream engineer Christian Decker, co-author of an early Lightning research paper at ETH Zurich.

Put another way, if each Lightning implementation used different technologies, then the networks wouldn't be able to "talk" with one another, and thus wouldn't be useful for sending payments across the network. (Alice would not be able to send to a payment to Bob if he were using another, incompatible network.)

Full story at http://bit.ly/2xiMVYF

Source: CoinDesk

 

 

 

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