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Lightning Speed 004: What’s The Lightning Development Initiative?

There’s no denying that 2021 was the Lightning Network’s year. What does the future hold, though? If the objective is to onboard the next billion people, the network needs work and fine-tuning. To grab the bull by the horns, The Human Rights Foundation and Strike set up three 1 BTC bounties. 

The bounties will go to the first person or team to develop an anonymous Lightning tip jar, a tokenless way to peg BTC to dollars, or a privacy-focused wallet that supports some kind of Chaumian e-cash feature. In a Twitter Spaces conversation about the program, they named it The Lightning Development Initiative. 

A catchy name that we’ll use from now on to refer to all of this. This fourth edition of Lightning Speed is all about the future. Let’s explore the three ideas and the new information that we have about each of them.

The Lightning Development Initiative In Twitter Spaces

Among the speakers were Strike’s Jack Mallers, The Human Rights Foundation’s Alex Gladstein, Bitcoin Magazine’s Christian Keroles AKA CK Snarks, and Tales From The Crypt’s Matt Odell. It took place on December 29th and Bitcoin Magazine hosted it. A Twitter user named Gigi summarized it for us.

🚨 A thread summarizing the Lightning Développement Initiative Space ⬇

3 amazingly interesting topic related to the bounties were discussed.

I'm so bullish on Lightning⚡ it hurts. Very grateful to have these people on our side ❤👑

let's look at my notes 🧵 pic.twitter.com/PRs9cohPaN

— Gigi ⚡🇨🇵 (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021

Bounty #1: An Anonymous Tip Jar

In our sister site Bitcoinist’s report, they described the challenge as follows:

“Can you create a Lightning tip jar that doesn’t reveal any information about the parties involved? That’s the first task. How to receive completely anonymous donations. According to Bitcoin Mag, the “goal is to enable anyone to use free and open-source software (FOSS) to print a QR code that can be used for receiving Lightning payments privately. Importantly, “The QR code should not reveal the public key or IP address of the user.” 

In the Lightning Development Initiative’s report, we learned that this has to do with the two competing protocols, Bolt12 and lnurl. Jack Mallers “pointed out the absolute need for interoperability on the Lightning Network and that even though lnurl might not be “optimal” right now, the market will eventually decide what open standard they prefer to use. He thinks that currently UX is a major focus for the Lightning community and we should make peace with the fact that there will be competition between solutions.”

Rockstar pointed out that this debate around lnurl vs bolt12 will have huge implications for the future but that he's glad that there's now an active discussion on the matter.

Jack added that contrary to the Bitcoin main chain, we can somewhat afford to fuck up on LN..

— Gigi ⚡🇨🇵 (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021

Mallers put forth another interesting idea, “contrary to the Bitcoin main chain, we can somewhat afford to f**k up on the Lightning Network. As long as the Bitcoin monetary policy is not threatened then we can freely fiddle on top of the protocol via Lightning.”

BTC price chart for 01/14/2022 on Bitfinex | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
Bounty #2: Stablecoin On Lightning Without A Token

Bitcoinist described this one as:

“The second challenge seems to be even more difficult, at least on a conceptual level. The HRF and Strike want a wallet that enables “anyone to “peg” an amount of bitcoin to U.S. dollars without needing an exchange or another token.” That’s right, without a centralized entity. And relying only on sats and bitcoin.”

Gigi summarizes why the world needs this:

“The goal is to allow people to access dollars without a single point of failure. Further down the line, as Bitcoin becomes less volatile, these people can use btc, but until then there’s massive demand for holding value in dollars. The tether market cap is proof of this.”

It serve an important humanitarian use case. We need to create the foundation for this new financial system.@Chris_Stewart_5 >> maybe it can be done with DLC's? Not using a token but rather something representing price exposure (think Eurodollar system). (oracles?)

The END.

— Gigi ⚡🇨🇵 (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021

Bounty #3: A Chaumian E-Cash Feature

First of all, Investopedia defines Chaumian e-cash as:

“eCash was a digital-based system that facilitated the transfer of funds anonymously. A pioneer in cryptocurrency, its goal was to secure the privacy of individuals that use the Internet for micropayments. eCash was created by Dr. David Chaum under his company, DigiCash, in 1990.“

So, once again, anonymity is the priority. As Alex Gladstein put it when announcing the bounties, they’re “for the first open-source, non-custodial, non-KYC Lightning wallets to ship features requested by dissidents worldwide.” Also, take into consideration the words of security expert Brian Trollz, “Bitcoin without privacy is nothing but a surveillance system.”

Bitcoin without privacy is nothing but a surveillance system.

— Shino (@brian_trollz) January 13, 2022

What does Gigi have for us on this topic? “We need a sort of Chaumian e-cash, extremely easy to use for the Plebs and accessible. Maybe the solution is a federated  one, making it harder to regulate.” He then quotes Jack Mallers again, “There’s going to be a singular standard for the internet of money (Bitcoin). Many will compete on top of BTC so we need “interoperability to the standard.”

Matt: We need to make it very easy to use because experience shows us that if it's somewhat challenging (coinjoins etcc) people won't bother to protect their privacy (goddam idiot normies 🤡)

— Gigi ⚡🇨🇵 (@GuerillaV2) December 29, 2021

Conclusion: The Future Is Bright

Developers, teams, companies, anyone can earn the Lighting Development Initiative’s bounties. The non-profit OpenSats will serve as the judge. They are all open for the whole year. If by the end of 2022 no one has claimed them, the money will go to the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund on January 1st. Which is fair. Especially considering they just gave 425 million Sats to these worthy organizations and individuals.

For more information and details read Bitcoinist’s original report.

Featured Image by Micah Tindell on Unsplash | Charts by TradingView

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Jack Dorsey’s TBD Presents Whitepaper For Decentralized Bitcoin Exchange

The first product of the Bitcoin-focused TBD will be tbDEX. A decentralized exchange that they deem “A Liquidity Protocol” in the recently released whitepaper. The Bitcoin network is permissionless, anyone with an Internet connection can jump in at any time. However, the Fiat world we live in is not. The banking system has endless requirements for participation, and those leave a high percentage of the population bankless and vulnerable. “We believe that the economy should be inclusive. We need to build on-ramps to this future where everyone can access and participate in the economy,” says TBD in the post that announces tbDEX.

Related Reading | Jack Dorsey: Square Could Build Bitcoin Mining System

A subsidiary of Jack Dorsey’s Square, they created TBD “with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services” for Bitcoin. And now, they have a plan. 

What Is TBD ‘s Value Proposition?

The tbDEX aims “to build bridges between the fiat and cryptocurrency worlds,” that much is clear. We still live in a Fiat world and, if Bitcoin is going to succeed, we need new, simpler, and cheaper ways to interact with said world. “There are serious challenges to realizing this vision. Fiat rails are regulated, and no interface with either the traditional monetary system or “real world” can be completely trustless.” 

So, what solution does TBD proposes? The tbDEX will allow participants to interact and transact with each other like Bisq and similar projects. However, TBD will also let users “mutually and voluntarily rely on trusted third-parties to vouch for the counterparty.” In the whitepaper itself, TBD contemplates that Participating Financial Institutions or PFIs will be part of the network. 

“PFIs can be, but are not limited to, fintech companies, regional banks, large institutional banks, or other financial institutions; PFIs have access to fiat payment systems and the ability to facilitate fiat payments in exchange for tokenized cryptocurrency assets or vice versa.”

The tbDEX will provide financial institutions with tools for KYC and AML procedures:

“The protocol will also carry the required regulatory-clearing information required by PFIs to conduct their AML and KYC checks before they provision liquidity to the wallet owner. However, the necessary information may vary based on the jurisdiction.”

Wait a minute… a decentralized exchange that requires KYC? What would be the point of that? Well, the protocol doesn’t require KYC procedures, but some institutions might. The good news is, participants don’t have to deal with those institutions if they don’t want to. They can just interact with each other and establish trust in other ways. 

BTC price chart for 11/20/2021 on FX | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
The Cost Of Anonymity

This is where it gets interesting. According to the whitepaper:

“The tbDEX protocol facilitates decentralized networks of exchange between assets by providing a framework for establishing social trust, utilizing decentralized identity (DID) and verifiable credentials (VCs) to establish the provenance of identity in the real world.”

It’s important to notice that “the protocol itself neither collects nor records any personally identifiable information.” However, if a participant wants anonymity it’s his or her responsibility to optimize for it. Once again, the whitepaper: 

“Our goal is not to maintain anonymity of transactions at all costs. Nor is it to undermine an individual’s ability to optimize for anonymity. Nothing in principle precludes anonymous transactions for financial privacy on the tbDEX network. A PFI could, in principle, require no VCs, but such transactions would represent a high degree of risk to the counterparties.” 

To assume that risk costs money. It’s as simple as that. The announcement post puts it nicely.

“Transaction costs are ultimately driven by risk. At maximum anonymity, transaction costs will necessarily be higher; at maximum disclosure, they should be lower. This approach to price discovery allows the marketplace to find the right balance.”  

Related Reading | Is Hyperinflation Inevitable? Jack Dorsey Says It’ll “Change Everything”

If You Have A Suggestion, Send It To TBD

The whitepaper is a rough outline of that tbDEX will eventually be.

“This initial draft of the whitepaper is meant to establish a conceptual understanding of the high-level design of the proposed tbDEX protocol. It should not be considered complete or final. It represents a proposed design for public comment.”

If you have any suggestions, contact TBD via Twitter or send them a pull request on GitHub.

Featured Image: tbDEX diagram from the whitepaper | Charts by TradingView