French Bitcoin technology company ACINQ has successfully tested and implemented leading Blockchain technology company Bitfury’s algorithm solution for instant payments routing on the Lightning Network.
Bitfury’s Lightning Network-based algorithm solution Flare was introduced in July 2016 in collaboration with the Lightning Network team, with the vision to deploy a hybrid routing algorithm,
The objective and intention behind the creation of Flare was to establish a more efficient and improved ecosystem for the settlement of microtransactions in the Bitcoin network. The BitFury development team believed that Flare could open Bitcoin to a wider range of use cases, such as peer-to-peer incentive-based file sharing platforms and applications.
Bitcoin micropayments
Traditionally, micropayments on the Bitcoin network take longer than normal payments to be verified and authenticated by miners globally due to their substantially lower transaction fees.
Micropayments worth 2 ~ 3 cents could take significantly longer time than normal transactions that include 2 ~ 3 cents in transaction fees, as miners prefer to prioritize transactions with higher incentives.
For such payments to be verified efficiently, Bitfury explains that development solutions like overlays are necessary to transform Bitcoin into a near-instant payment processing network. One overlay that Bitfury and ACINQ have successfully tested and implemented is the Lightning Network.
Algorithm tested
In essence, the Lightning Network is a micropayments-enabling low cost and instantaneous network that operates bi-directional payment channels which refrain transactions from being recorded on the Bitcoin Blockchain. The security measures and performance of the Lightning Network is determined by Bitcoin’s built-in scripting-based Blockchain smart contracts that allows the Lightning Network to benefit from the security and immutability of the Bitcoin Blockchain and inter-ledger payments of a smart contract network.
ACINQ and Bitfury’s successful testing of a Lightning Network-based algorithm brings the Bitcoin network to another level in terms of possibilities of application and potential in a wider range of markets.
“This success exemplifies why The Bitfury Group is committed to research and to supporting the implementation of Lightning Network. Our dedicated engineers as well as our fellow Blockchain companies are committed to the success of Lightning,” said Valery Vavilov, CEO of The Bitfury Group.
“This test of Flare, with small modifications made by the ACINQ team, shows that our solution is not only theoretically feasible, but successful. We are now one step closer to bringing the Lighting Network into reality and solving the scalability issue of the Bitcoin Blockchain,” Vavilov added.
The significance of the successful implementation of the Lightning Network has proven that such innovative technologies can be integrated and implemented to Bitcoin-based platforms to extend the operations of the Bitcoin network.
The Lightning Network development team also stated that Bitfury’s Flare implementation and testing have strengthened the investigation of the team.
“With a live, large scale network test of Flare, ACINQ has taken the investigation of the algorithm to the next level supplementing our prior simulations. Their live network tests shows that the scheme is indeed workable in practice, bolstering our theoretical investigation,” said Laolu Osuntokun, Lightning Network engineer and co-author of the Flare paper.