On March 15th, 2018, Elizabeth Stark, CEO of Lightning Labs, announced the birth of the first official beta version of the lightning network. The solution was supported by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, SpaceX investor Bill Lee and computer giant Microsoft, other prominent members of the encryption community also expressed their support.
A year later, the Lightning Network (LN) has made great strides. According to data from the LN monitoring website 1ML.com, the network has a capacity of 1057 BTC（about $4.3 million）, which has increased by 50%+ in the past 30 days alone.[1]
https://i.redd.it/kuq714zq0pn21.png
With the continuous development of the lightning network, many wallets have publicly expressed support for the lightning network. However, most of the wallets have not yet completed the support on the product, only few of them are actual functional.
This guide will give a comprehensive overview of the most mature wallets that support bitcoin lighting network and will also introduce some fun APP with lighting network payment (LAPP) so that you can experience the Lighting network and have some fun.
1. Lighting Network Wallet(https://lightning-wallet.com)
Lighting Network Wallet is an Android based wallet can be downloaded at google play. It features a standalone SPV Bitcoin node with a fully functional built-in Lightning node and allows for sending and receiving of regular Bitcoin transactions as well as off-chain Lightning payments.
Although the name looks like an official wallet, it is actually a product from an individual developer - Anton Kumaigorodski. However, Lighting Network Wallet is indeed one of the first wallets on the market to support lightning networks. Despite being a personal product, Lighting Network Wallet has very good reputation in the market, and Anton Kumaigorodski is also an experienced blockchain wallet developer with other 3 wallet product.
The first-time open Lighting Network Wallet, choose a new wallet, the app will create a wallet and prompt the user to save the mnemonic phrase.
Then you can see on-chain funds and off-chain funds which refer to Bitcoin Wallet and Lightning Network Wallet. To use the lightning network, you must first transfer a certain amount of BTC into the Bitcoin wallet, and then use these BTCs to create a new channel by yourself.
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https://i.redd.it/z5mp12tr0pn21.png
2. Blue Wallet (https://bluewallet.io)
Blue Wallet is an on-chain bitcoin wallet which supports both traditional bitcoin model and custodial lightning network model. On Blue wallet, you can create custodial Lightning wallets (or choose to run your own node), that allows you to use the Lightning Network for payments, without the need to open channels, be online, provide liquidity or operate and maintain a node. This Lightning model is powered by the LNDhub.
This is how custodial model works:
"when user sends his bitcoins to a dedicated top-up address, and this balance is added to his account on LndHub. Then, the user can use this balance to pay Lightning invoices. But under the hood, it’s actually LndHub who pays the invoice, deducting the user’s account balance. It works the same way when the user wants to receive a Lightning payment - it’s LndHub who creates Lightning invoice and actually receives bitcoins on one of its channels.[2]
Compared to non-custodial lighting network wallets, Blue is much easier to onboard since it’s a more centralized model. When you are using the Lightning Network functions you rarely have obstacles on picking up. It’s just like using a common centralized wallet. The Blue Wallet team just set up an underlying channel on behalf of you at the rear end. So strictly speaking, it’s not a fully decentralized Lightning Network solution. It’s more of a transitional product than a professional solution. The drawbacks of this solution are user transfers his funds in custody to a 3rd party (and we all know that trusted 3rd parties are security holes, thanks to Nick Szabo).
However, it can bring more users to the Lightning Network with better user experiences. Therefore, if you are a newbie, you can start from Blue Wallet. But blue wallet app is not stable enough, I always encountered the blank page of the interface, where allow me to do nothing but reinstall it.
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3. Eclair Mobile (https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair-mobile)
Eclair Mobile is a wallet running by ACINQ, a well-known Lighting channel. And the name of "Eclair" actually is the word "Lightning" in French.
Like Lighting network wallet, after created a new wallet in Eclair, I put a small amount of bitcoin into the wallet first. Then I can start to open new LN channel with two options - open with a random LN node or open with ACINQ node. I choose the ACINQ code and pay the funding tx fee as it asks. After around 20 mins, a new LN channel was setup. Then I tried twice with the new channel. The first time, I use another LN wallet to transfer 10 Santoshi but failed. The reason why it failed maybe relate to the unstable of the bridge node. Then the second time, it works.
Interestingly, when closing the channel, it reminds me that I have to wait for 720+ blocks to get my BTC back. It is a really long time to wait.
4. Bitpie Wallet (https://bitpie.com)
Unlike other lightning network wallets, Bitpie is **an on-chain wallet supports a lot of major blockchain such Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, USDT, LTC, DASH and even Tron.**Bitpie wallet came from the same team who develop Bither wallet(https://bither.net) which is listed in bitcoin.org for many years and it looks like they have huge user base in Asia.
Similar to Blue wallet, Bitpie lighting network wallet is also a custodial model which reduce users learning curve. To use LN, user have to switch to bitcoin wallet first then switch from on-chain bitcoin model to LN model. The rest things are same to all the lighting wallets. You can enter a specific amount to collect or scan or bar code to send some Santoshis. But as a custodial model wallet, you don’t have to choose node or setup channel.
As a custodial model LN wallet, the overall experience is user-friendly and smooth. Bitpie also has a LAPP marketplacewhere users are able to use LAPP in wallet.
https://i.redd.it/f0xur9kt0pn21.png
5. Zap Wallet (https://zap.jackmallers.com)
Zap Wallet is a Lightning network Wallet provides two clients - iOS and windows desktop version. Although ZAP wallet is one of most powerful lighting network wallet candidates, it is not a user-friendly wallet at this moment.
Compare to other wallets, it is a little bit hard to get start with ZAP wallet. Since it is still in early development stage, by default, ZAP will connect you to bitcoin testnet rather than mainnet and it will take hours for blockchain data synchronization before you can use it.
When the synchronization is complete, user will able connect to one of those existing nodes and send some tBTCs(testnet Bitcoins) to setup a lighting network channel in testnet. Zap is also functional on mainnet, but you have to setup your own LND node, do a lot of configuration in command line before you can actually use it. This is way complicated for users but for hardcore player**, ZAP is definitely the most powerful lighting network wallet.**
6. Have some fun with LAPPs
There are already some fun LAPPs that you can pay with Lighting Network. Only very few of them are serious commercial project, but we can definitely have some fun with those LAPPs.
1. Satoshi’s Place (https://satoshis.place)
Satoshi's Place is a Lightning Network powered online collaborative artboard. There are 1 million pixels on the canvas. Each pixel costs 1 Santoshi to paint and pixels can be painted over indefinitely.
This is a great way to experience the power of micro-transactions through the Bitcoin Lightning Network and have some fun.
https://i.redd.it/0uv4klz01pn21.png
The editing tools built into the website make it easy to draw, and finally calculate the total pixels, and check out through the lightning network.
Can you find my paint?
2. Bitrefill(https://www.bitrefill.com)
Bitrefill is an e-commerce site that lets you refill prepaid mobile phone or buy gift card using bitcoin lighting network. It supports prepaid SIM cards from over 600 carriers in over 150 countries. Full privacy and the top up happen as soon as the transaction clears.
Compares to most experimental LAPP, Bitrefill is a serious commercial project which is rare in Lighting Network community. You can really use the lightning network to pay for what you need in your life such as phone bill, dominos gift card or reddit award.
https://i.redd.it/faxczw011pn21.png
In a nutshell, The lightning network has grown tremendously, but the entire lightning network is still at a very early stage compared to other mature blockchain networks. As an experimental solution to the micropayment, it still has a long way to go.
However, with the continuous support of more wallets and the continuous emergence of LAPP, Lightning Network already entered a channel of accelerated development. With this speed, maybe you will use the Lightning Network every day to pay for a subway ticket, a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza in near future. 📷
[1] https://medium.com/altcoin-magazine/altcoin-news-lightning-network-bandwidth-on-bitcoin-blockchain-topped-1-000-btc-48b37318b7b6
[2] https://medium.com/bluewallet/bluewallet-brings-zero-configuration-lightning-payments-to-ios-and-android-30137a69f071
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