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Jack Dorsey's Cash App Integrates Bitcoin's Lightning Network

 2 years ago
source link: https://slashdot.org/story/22/02/08/2115251/jack-dorseys-cash-app-integrates-bitcoins-lightning-network
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Jack Dorsey's Cash App Integrates Bitcoin's Lightning Network

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bitcoin Magazine: Users of Block's mobile payments platform Cash App can now make instant and free bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network, the company tweeted on Monday. The integration of Bitcoin's second-layer protocol for faster and cheaper transactions was made possible by the Lightning Development Kit, an open-source project developed by another company owned by Block, Spiral. The Lightning Development Kit (LDK) is a flexible Lightning implementation geared towards developers who want to integrate Bitcoin's Lightning Network into their applications frictionlessly. It abstracts away complexities of Lightning, enabling developers to integrate the network easier and faster into their apps.

Jack Dorsey said in a fireside chat last week with Michael Saylor, the CEO of software intelligence company MicroStrategy, that having Cash App integrate Lightning through the Spiral's work was one of the proudest moments of his career. [...] Despite critics saying that Bitcoin cannot be used as a means of exchange due to its base layer's slow settlements, Lightning empowers Bitcoin to handle the smallest of payments for little to no cost. Now, all Cash App users can also leverage Lightning to send small payments instantly and for free. However, it seems that Cash App cannot yet receive Lightning transactions itself -- only send them.

  • ›

    and it's GONE. Please step aside sir, this line is for people who actually have money to deposit.

  • Grifters gotta grift.

    Sure, one complaint critics always seem to bring up about crypto is the atrocious latency to complete transactions. But really these alternative transaction protocols only hack around important design aspects of crypto. They ignore the original reason and security around them, and replace them with something that is faster and less robust. None of us are really all that sure that Lightning is secure, and we know that if there is fraud in the network that rolling it back or disputing it

    • Re:

      The Lightning Network is a so called "layer-2" payment protocol on top of the bitcoin blockchain. It is comparable to fiat payment processors such as Visa or PayPal, in that these batch many payments together before they settle via banks using fed-wire as the settlement layer weeks later, which would be analog to settling on the bitcoin blockchain (via opening and closing LN channels). The same way you don't need the finality of fed-wire for buying coffee, you also don't need the brutal nuclear-war security

      • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @06:50PM (#62251251) Homepage

        LN is not decentralized. Trust is outsourced to watchtowers, which can - yes - both surveil and rollback transactions. The technical requirements for watchtowers, and the need for users to trust them (rather than trusting any random person who starts up a watchtower) means you can expect them to centralize into a small number of large corporate services. You have to pay for their services. And malicious watchtowers have great power indeed, esp. with multi-watchtower collaboration.

        Lightning has issues [bitcoinmagazine.com].

        • Re:

          You exaggerate the importance of watchtowers. They're helpful in guarding against a potentially-malicious counterparty, but are in no way required. Your own link says they're only useful if your node isn't online 24/7, and maintaining uptime is only really an issue for mobile devices. Even for mobiles, as long as they're not offline for more than 24 hours, they should have enough time to spot any malicious channel closures before the funds can be spent, without needing to resort to watchtowers.

          And no, they

    • Re:

      It also defeats the entire "point", if there ever was one.

      Bitcoin: "Nobody has to trust anyone else! Fully decentralized! No authorities! Freeedooom!"

      Lightning: "Hey, let's outsource all fraud monitoring in our transactions to centralized third-party Watchtower nodes!"

      Let's omit the fact that if you were okay with trusting third parties to confirm that transactions are legitimate, you can skip the entire resource-gobbling blockchain to begin with. Proof-of-authority allows for a near-zero-overhead system.

  • I see they are using WOM...you can send money that has zero or infinite value (depending on who you talk to) somewhere. It is safely written down somewhere but you cannot read it yet !

  • This is the first time I've posted on/. so please excuse anything not kosher.

    I'd like to know more about this Bitcoin integration with the Cash.app. I currently use Stripe for a website business where I charge my customers and then payout customers. FYI - Stripe takes a fee from the total amount for both receiving and paying out. I take an additional fee for each payout.

    Question - It would be nice to integrate a service (Ex. Cash.app) that didn't take any fee except mine, where I can collect money/Bitc

    • Re:

      1BTC will always be 1BTC. If you keep the balance in BTC, but want to have a future balance in USD (to name an example), you will be subject to the exchange rate at that moment. If you want to avoid that, you'd need to convert into the currency you are interested in at the moment you receive the amount. This is no different than dealing with any two different currencies, except that BTC/USD is a lot more volatile than (for example) EUR/USD. Btw, Strike has a neat product that lets you use the lightning netw

      • Re:

        Wouldn't this Cash.app be similar Strike? And doesn't Strike have fees? I'm interested in a fee free API.

  • In a mature market Lightning liquidity costs would create large costs for users, but as long as almost no one uses it Dorsey&Co can just subsidize it for PR.

  • Jack Dorsey said in a fireside chat last week with Michael Saylor, the CEO of software intelligence company MicroStrategy...

    A fireside chat? Who the hell is buying that crap?
    Does anyone really believe a couple of ruthless sharks, both of whom would sell their grandmother for the chemicals have just sat down together to chat in front of a camera?
    As if people like that have friends or something.

    • Re:

      Basically no. Not that anyone can clearly define what is Web3-compliant.

  • Any one with half a brain can see that Bitcoin is attack on democracy. The inability to print money while a wet dream for a Machiavellian fascist is a night mare for a democratic economist. So once and for all, is slashdot o the side of good or just a joyful participant in the overtaking of democracy?

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