The official announcement by the unit of Block (SQ) was made Thursday at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami Beach, Florida.
Block Launches New Service Provider to Make Lightning More Reliable
The new entity dubbed “c=” aims to improve liquidity and routing on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
Spiral BTC Releases Lightning Development Kit. Jack Dorsey’s Puppet Promotes It
The Lightning Development Kit is Spiral BTC’s latest offering to the community. And to the world. The LDK is “The simplest way to integrate Lightning into your Bitcoin wallet.” It’s free to use and it contains building blocks that anyone can integrate with their product. The big news, however, is Jack Dorsey’s puppet. The company, Spiral BTC, released this video to promote the Lightning Development Kit’s release. And Jack Dorsey’s puppet stars in it.
Is it hilarious or cringe? Opinions vary. One thing’s for sure, however, it captured the mase’s attention and got eyeballs on the Lightning Development Kit project. So, it definitely worked as a marketing tool and the Bitcoin community should cherish it. Even though the Spiral team says that the main layer is too slow, “sucks,” and it’s “painful to use.” Nothing could be further from the truth, layer one does perfectly what it needs to do. If you want speed and ease of use, just go up to layer two. That’s where the LDK lives.
Related Reading | Jack Dorsey: Square Could Build Bitcoin Mining System
What’s The Lightning Development Kit?
The project’s documentation defines it as:
“Lightning Development Kit (LDK) is a generic library which allows you to build a Lightning node without needing to worry about getting all of the Lightning state machine, routing, and on-chain punishment code (and other chain interactions) exactly correct. LDK tends to be suitable for use cases where a degree of customization is desired, e.g. your own chain sync, your own key management and/or your own storage/backup logic.”
On the Lightning Development Kit’s introductory page, they promise the product was “designed from the ground up to be easily customized to your application needs.” Also, “as lightweight as you need it to be and optimized to run on all embedded devices such as mobile phones, IoT devices, PoS terminals and more.” Also, and this is very important, the use the Muun approach and help you create a single wallet experience. What does this mean?
“No need to create separate Bitcoin & Lightning wallets, forcing users to backup an additional recovery phrase. Instead, we let you define your own wallet and create one unified experience.”
What’s Spiral BTC And What Else Do They Do?
The company used to be called Square Crypto. When Jack Dorsey abandoned Twitter to focus on other ventures, it change its name to Spiral BTC. The aim was to convey better what their mission is all about. “Bitcoin is the best money. It should be used like it. We build and fund free, open-source projects aimed at making bitcoin the planet’s preferred currency.” When all of this happened, our sister site Bitcoinist gave us the 411:
“The year is almost at its close and as such companies have begun to make plans for the coming year. For Spiral, the year 2022 will be a year of expansion as it will be working on a number of projects in the new year. To do this, Spiral (formerly Square Crypto) plans to double the number of full-time developers in the coming year.
Some of the projects the devs will be working on include the Lightning Development Kit (LDK), the Bitcoin Development Kit (BDK), the grant program, and the Bitcoin Design Guide and Community.“
That’s right, they sponsor the fantastic Bitcoin Design Guide and already released a Bitcoin Development Kit for those who wish to build on layer one. They also give grants to Bitcoin developers, designers, and great projects like BTCPay Server, Lightning Signer, The Eye of Satoshi, and the widely used Mempool.
BTC price chart for 12/07/2021 on Gemini | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
Other Jack-Dorsey-Led Bitcoin Projects
As soon as the rumor of Jack Dorsey leaving Twitter hit… well… Twitter, Bitcoinist ran a piece that praised his contributions to the space and speculated on what he would do next:
“The allegedly soon-to-be former Twitter CEO is perhaps best compared to Hal Finney in terms of the positive impact he has had on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Both of have famously tweeted about “Running Bitcoin,” and both are now names nearly as synonymous with the top ranked crypto asset as Satoshi Nakamoto themselves.
Finney’s legacy has sadly ended, but could Dorsey’s truly just be at the very beginning in terms of what the business entrepreneur could bring to the overall Bitcoin ecosystem?”
Related Reading | Is Hyperinflation Inevitable? Jack Dorsey Says It’ll “Change Everything”
Before that, Jack Dorsey’s other Bitcoin-focused company TBD announced its first big project. The tbDEX will be a decentralized exchange and liquidity protocol. When the company released the whitepaper, NewsBTC reported on it and described the project as:
“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.”
At the Bitcoin 2021 Conference, Jack Dorsey said “Bitcoin changes absolutely everything. I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on”. And now, he’s laser-focused on it. Things are moving fast since he left Twitter. It wouldn’t surprise us if the tbDEX releases a working version soon. They didn’t announce any timeline, though. Only one thing’s for sure. When the decentralized exchange is ready for the world to see, TBD should use Jack Dorsey’s puppet to promote it.
Feature Image: Screenshot from the promotional video | Charts by TradingView
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
Will Bisq Be Part Of Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin DEX Project? Here’s The 411
As NewsBTC informed, Square will develop a Bitcoin-only Decentralized Exchange. However, will they work in conjunction with Bisq, the “peer-to-peer trading network”? Jack Dorsey seemed to confirm that both organizations are going to start talking at the very least. Why does this matter? What makes Bisq special? Keep reading to find out.
Related Reading | Why Square Will Create New Bitcoin-Focused Company, According To CEO Jack Dorsey
The Tweets That Point To Bisq
Def! Cc:@brockm
— jack⚡️ (@jack) August 27, 2021
Bisq answered that tweet with which Dorsey announced that his company’s TBD project would be to “build an open platform to create a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin.” The Bisq people claimed that they’ve been building their product “to be the go-to peer-to-peer DEX for bitcoin power-users.”Then, they offered collaboration, “Our heads together could result in something better than any of us could imagine.”
Dorsey answered “Def!” and copied Mike Brock, leader of the TBD project.
That exchange doesn’t guarantee anything, sure. But the organizations will meet, and they seem to share a lot philosophically speaking. The Bitcoin community, for its part, reacted under Jack’s tweet with a lot of “This is the way,” exciting .gifs, and Bisq praise.
BTC price chart for 08/29/2021 on Coinbase | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
Why Will Dorsey’s DEX Be Bitcoin-Only?
In NewsBTC’s announcement of Square’s Decentralized Exchange project, we quoted:
Jack Dorsey’s tweet quoted an extensive thread by Square executive Mike Brock, TBD project head, who outlined the potential development paths for the open-source DEX.
“We believe Bitcoin will be the native currency of the internet. While there are many projects that will help make the internet more decentralized, our focus is solely on a sound global monetary system for all. But including all requires a few pieces we think we are missing.” Brock said in one of his tweets.
This is in tune with ideas expressed by Dorsey himself.
The reason I have so much passion for #Bitcoin is largely because of the model it demonstrates: a foundational internet technology that is not controlled or influenced by any single individual or entity. This is what the internet wants to be, and over time, more of it will be.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) January 14, 2021
After all, Square created the Bitcoin-focused TBD “with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services.”
Square is creating a new business (joining Seller, Cash App, & Tidal) focused on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services. Our primary focus is #Bitcoin. Its name is TBD.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) July 15, 2021
Everything That Makes Bisq Special
A couple of years ago, Manfred Karrer, Bisq co-founder, spoke to CoinDesk.”The goal is to become as decentralized and censorship-resistant as bitcoin. That’s a very high goal and it took bitcoin a very long time to get there,” he said. On Bisq’s site, they claim that “Bisq is code, not a company.” And said software is “open-source and community-driven.” What else makes Bisq special? Well…
Related Reading | Running Bitcoin: Passing The Torch From Hal Finney To Jack Dorsey
- First of all, “It’s software you run on your own hardware, which connects to other people running the Bisq software to facilitate trades.” Sort of like how torrents work.
- Bisq does not hold Bitcoin or any national currency. All the deals are between “the trading peers themselves.” And Bisq only has minimal information about either of them. Also, “no data is stored on who trades with whom.”
- And speaking about privacy. “All Bisq data is transferred over its own secure peer-to-peer network, which is built on top of the Tor network—no central servers.”
- The service doesn’t require registration.
- To grease the wheels, “Both traders are required to pay security deposits, which are refunded after trades are completed.”
- Bisq doesn’t accept Paypal or credit cards because chargebacks are too easy.
- Bisq eliminates “the need for trusted third party exchange services.”
- The Bisq network “is fully peer-to-peer in that it requires no centrally-controlled servers and has no single points of failure.”
However, you should also know that someone hacked Bisq that one time, stealing $250K.
Featured Image by Jeremy Zero on Unsplash – Charts by TradingView
