Spiral Plots course endorsed by Jack Dorsey for mainstream adoption of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network could be nearing mainstream acceptance as an LDK—one of the most important implementations of the network—relies on one ambitious new roadmap to improve functionality and accessibility for users.

Lightning Development Kit, also known as LDK, is a project by Bitcoin open source development unit Spiral, funded by Jack Dorsey’s Block. LDK plays a significant role in Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, and the project’s team recently presented technical improvements during a Twitter Sections what they want to work on in the next year.

It’s significant considering that Bitcoin supporters are convinced that if anything makes Bitcoin mainstream, it will be the Lightning Network, making payments cheaper, faster, and more scalable. But while the Lightning network works, it has rough edges and isn’t always easy for new users to send payments to.

First, there is a difference between Lightning mobile wallets with and without custody. Custodial wallets require the user to trust the wallet provider with the funds, while non-custodial wallets give wallets sole control of their own funds.

“The Lightning Network is a pretty good user experience for custodial Lightning Network wallets today. However, significant UX, privacy, and scaling issues remain for non-custodial Lightning wallets,” said Steve Lee, Spiral lead decrypt.

The LDK roadmap, assembled from a set of features, aims to address this issue – with the aim of making the Lightning Network more attractive to mainstream users.

2023 Lightning dev kit. Source: LDK

Bitcoin UX improvements

LDK differs from LND and C-Lightning, the most common software implementations of the Lightning Network. The LDK team wants to be more modular and flexible to make life easier for developers when building (especially mobile) Lightning wallets and apps. And there are two features on the roadmap in particular that are unique to LDK.

Although LDK is not a node per se, developers can use it to create custom Lightning nodes to suit their needs. But the freedom LDK offers is too intimidating for developers new to developing the network, Lee noted in the Twitter sections.

A key feature on the roadmap is LDK Node Mobile, which offers an easier setup to create a node. Nodes are a key element of any Lightning app. They connect the app to the rest of the network, allowing users to send and receive payments. Instead of developers taking days or weeks to build a node with LDK, Lee argues that LDK Node will cut that time down to hours.

Another unique feature LDK is working on is something called “asynchronous payments”. One of the irritating issues of Lightning mobile users is when they try to send a mobile payment to a friend, the friend has to be online to receive the payment, otherwise the payment will fail. Hovering over a phone to wait for a payment defeats the purpose of lightning-fast payments. Users don’t have to deal with this issue when sending a Venmo payment, so why the need with Bitcoin?

Spiral developer and longtime Bitcoin contributor Matt Corallo released a suggestion to avoid this problem in 2021. And as the LDK roadmap shows, implementing asynchronous payments is a key focus for the LDK team over the next year.

The decentralized future of Lightning

Then there are a lot of other changes that the LDK developers are working on that will improve the usability of the payment system. If you’ve been following the whirlwind of Bitcoin and Lightning Network development, you may have heard of some as other implementations are also adopting these changes to spread them further.

LDK is working on the adoption SCREW 12, a proposal to simplify billing and accepting Lightning payments. It’s a mishmash of features with awkwardly technical names (like “onion news” and “blind paths”). In short, BOLT 12 will enable a better user experience where users can reuse Lightning invoices to accept payments. BOLT 12 also increases privacy. “Blind paths” allow a user to accept payments without revealing their identity. Usually, the sender knows the public key, which represents the identity of the node to which it is sending a payment. But with blinded paths, this information is shielded.

Another big win is the upcoming support for the privacy feature taproot. In 2021, Taproot was Bitcoin’s biggest upgrade in years. Taproot’s impact on Bitcoin projects like Lightning is slowly spreading. Taproot shields Lightning transactions and makes them invisible, making them look just like regular bitcoin transactions. If you look at a Block Explorer To see all bitcoin transactions ever made, Lightning transactions usually stand out because they use a technique called “multi-sig”. This can usually be recognized as the data looks more complicated than a normal bitcoin transaction.

That only scratches the surface of the roadmap. “There is no doubt that this is an ambitious roadmap,” Lee said decrypt, noting that time estimates for development projects can be “difficult”. But it offers a close look at what Lightning Network developers will be working on in the near future.

Lightning developers have a lot of work ahead of them. Improvements to the network are as vast as the network itself. But with every change they make, a piece is pushed towards transforming Bitcoin into a more user-friendly payment system.

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