Week Of The Lapps: Blockstream Presents Infrastructure For Lightning Network

Previously, the Bitcoin scene reinvented applications that were already available for Fiat money - but with Bitcoin. Now the scene seems to reinvent the whole thing - but with Lightning.

It is no secret that the company Blockstream is one of the driving forces behind the development of the Lightning Network. Currently, the company celebrates the week of Lapps, the "Lightning Applications". Every day there is a new application for Lightning. So far these are the following five Lapps:

• FileBazaar: This Lapp is an e-commerce tool for anyone who wants to sell content such as photos, videos or documents. A pay-per-view system releases the uploaded files bit by bit for each payment. FileBazaar builds on LightningCharge, a block-engineered micropayment processor for Lightning. If you want to use the Lapp, you need a Lightning-Node, a Lightning-Charge-Server and the FileBazaar App.

• Lightning Publisher for WordPress: The Lightning Publisher Lapp is also set up on LightningCharge. Lightning Publisher is a plugin for the popular blogging software WordPress, with which you can sell articles against Lightning payments.

• Nanotip: This tool makes it possible to accept donations and "tips" via Lightning. In doing so, Nanotip keeps creating new, individual payment codes, bypassing the problem that the amount is part of a payment code on Lightning. Compared to normal Bitcoin donations, Nanotip impresses with its lower fees and higher privacy.

• Paypercall: Of all the featured Lapps, Paypercall is perhaps the most exciting, writes Blockstream on the blog. Because it makes a lot possible and can "become the cornerstone of a completely new class of services over the Internet". Namely developers of APIs with Paypercall can combine certain actions with payments. So you could ask for a small payment to send a text message, a nano payment to process an image, and so on.

• Nanopos: One of Lightning's great strengths is that unconfirmed payments are instantly secure. Blockstream now wants to use this for the retail industry by publishing an easy-to-use software for the cash register with Nanopos.

It's great that Blockstream provides the various modules for a Lightning ecosystem for free and open source. That's exactly what Lightning needs when it's in the field for which it is ideally suited - micropayment.

Actually not something new

The problem, however, is that each of these applications already exists. There are many sites to sell files for Bitcoin to hide articles or blog posts behind a Bitcoin paywall. There are and were bots that process tips on social networks, and if someone wants a donation, they just have to publish a Bitcoin address. The idea of asking for API calls and other computer services has also been implemented by 21.com - today Earn.com - and is also being addressed by IOTA. Likewise, there are already numerous Bitcoin tools for retail.

For example, when Blockstream writes that "Lapps like FileBazaar and Lightning Publisher are dramatically changing the dynamics of content production on the Internet," and promises to free authors and artists from reliance on sponsors or advertisers, or Paypercall completely new markets on the Internet this sounds like the company invented these applications. In fact, it has merely transferred existing, often visionary, applications for Bitcoin to Lightning.

But most importantly, it may be saying that all of these applications have not really ignited so far. Some platforms for selling files for Bitcoins are reasonably well-endorsed, but the bulk has been received. In terms of micropayments for content, Yours.org and Steemit are likely to be the only sites that are reasonably successful - but not nearly enough to have any visible impact on the media industry - while SatoshiPay's nanopayment tools and API markets from Earn.com are more or less apparent.

Does Lightning change anything at the core of the problem?

Why, the big question, should Lightning change something? Micropayments do not really care about the fact that transactions are confirmed right away, as they usually accept unconfirmed transactions without any reservations. The only real benefit is that with Lightning, you can cut fees even further and process a massive volume of payments on a sustained basis without attacking the basics of blockchain. However, this has not been the problem of attempts to realize micropayment with Bitcoin.

Rather, the problems were that there are not enough customers who use cryptocurrencies, and that for them the use is often too cumbersome. Lightning, you have to say, does not change these problems, but rather makes them worse. Lightning reduces the network effect Bitcoin has tediously built on the existing 1,350 nodes. The Lapps are likely to be the recipient of payments probably the most complicated and time-consuming way to implement the desired payment application, while using Lightning, the numbers for the user, at least currently, even more complicated.

There is not much to suggest that Bitcoin applications, which have little or no success on the market, are suddenly learning to fly because they run Lightning. Rather, one may assume that it will be a very long time before Lightning payments reach the network effects and usability that Bitcoin payments have built up over the course of nine years. Regardless, the lapps featured by Blockstream are definitely the first way to bring such payments to Bitcoin sustainably and long term.

Once the micropayment thing really lights up, you'll need Lightning. But it is questionable whether Lightning really helps to get there.

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Image Sources:

• Post header created by myself
• https://blockstream.com

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LOVE&LIGHT