#22 - March 3rd, 2021

⚡ 1 year anniversary, DLCs, RGB, Ecosystem and much more!

Mar 03, 2021

Welcome to the 22nd issue of this newsletter which covers everything at the intersection of the Lightning Network and Finance, as well as updates about LN Markets. If you enjoy this content, feel free to spread the word!

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🎂 1 year anniversary

Just 1 year ago, we launched the first real-time settled derivative trading platform: LN Markets.

LN Markets leverages Bitcoin’s Lightning Network to provide our dear users with:

⚡ Faster settlement: T+1 second

🔓 Risk reduction: ratio (daily volume / cold wallet) x 4

😀 Better UX: trade directly from your wallet

💸 Cost-reduction: 2 on-chain fees for an infinite number of trades

And your response has been amazing!

Overall, we have processed (despite a trading limit of 0.01 BTC):

✨ 150,000 trades

⚡ 100,000 Lightning transactions

💥 $100Mio in Aggregate Trading Volume

We are also proud to build for a global user base (40% EMEA / 30% APAC / 30% Americas). Our main milestones:

🤖 Algorithmic instant trading with our Open API

❤️‍ Wallet and node integration with Breez, ThunderHub and more exciting partnerships coming!

🌱 Pre-seed fundraise with Bitfinex, Arcane Crypto and Fulgur Ventures.

For the year to come, our action plan is just to keep building stuff (though not sure on which side of the bell curve we are):

Our next move is the launch of LN Clear, a non-custodial clearing for OTC derivatives for brokers, traders and market makers.

LN Clear is a private network of payment channels where trading firms can meet their peers to trade and clear instantly OTC derivatives. LN Clear ensures that the whole process from trade confirmation to final settlement is secure, fast and simple.

Though any type of OTC derivative could be cleared on LN Clear in the near future, we focus first on the fast-growing Bitcoin Options markets. More on that very soon!

We thank you all for your continuous support and feedback on Twitter and Telegram!

🧰 Discreet Log Contracts (DLCs)

Suredbits has released a new product call Krystal Bull, an application for anyone to become a DLC oracle, along with an oracle explorer.

Here is how it works: you can become an oracle and decide to attest to an observed value, like $51,000 for bitcoin price on March 3rd, 2021 at 9:00AM UTC. Krystal Bull will create an attestation for the value you entered (through a digital signature) and anyone can use this attestation for the settlement of Bitcoin-based derivatives. Here is a demo:

Crypto Garage has released a new version of P2PDerivatives which gives you the ability to close DLCs even when the price goes outside of the range defined in your contract. This allows to cover wider range of outcome with little overhead. Next on their roadmap is support for multi-oracles and move to a P2P network infrastructure.

💣 RGB

MyCitadel is now live! It is the first wallet that supports Bitcoin and RGB assets, and it is designed with Taproot and Multisigs in mind. Activating RGB support can de done via several ways (rgb sdk, MyCitadel node integration, RGB Node+LNP Node+BP Node integration, etc).

With RGB, it becomes for example feasible to transfer up to 64,000 NFTs in a single transaction Bitcoin, with full privacy:

Dr Maxim Orlovsky [LNP/BP] @dr_orlovsky

Hey, #chainanalysis companies, this tx does a complex #RGB asset transfer with #ClientValidatedData. Go on and try to find what is going in behind it! blockstream.info/testnet/tx/304… This is a dawn of a new age for privacy

blockstream.infoBitcoin Testnet Explorer - Blockstream.infoBlockstream Explorer is an open source block explorer providing detailed blockchain data across Bitcoin, Testnet, and Liquid. Supports Tor and tracking-free.

🌱 Ecosystem

A very bullish metric: there are now 9,300 public nodes in the Lightning Network, an 80% increase year-to-date!

While more and more exchanges add support to Lightning:

Ray Youssef @raypaxful

Paxful’s plan is to get every wallet in Africa using lightning ⚡️

Pomp 🌪 @APompliano

The Lightning Network will fundamentally change the world.

It’s great to see the pioneers exchanges in the space handling and ever-growing number of transactions:

Paolo Ardoino @paoloardoino

In the last 30 days @bitfinex processed 12.5k #lightningnetwork ⚡️ transactions. Mostly deposits. WOW, just WOW... #Bitcoin

The LN-based Bitcoin payment platform Bottlepay has announced a $15Mio fundraise, reaching a post-money valuation of $71 million. The biggest funding round to date for a Lightning Network company?

And finally, a very promising project, though still experimental. This Lightning Browser extension uses native messaging to connect to wallet interfaces. It could be a massive added value for the overall Lightning UX: