Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Upgrades Solve These Baker’s Dozen of the Biggest Problems

At the time when Satoshi Nakamoto first projected bitcoin in 2008, the very first statement on the system was made by James A. Donald, and it states:

“the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size.”

A few years later, scalability was still the most excellent hurdle bitcoin had as well as other cryptocurrencies.

What then is the essence of scalability? Even though Bitcoin has been around for some time now, it can only perform about seven transactions per second. Yes, it wasn’t an issue right from the start; it’s now a problem due to the congestion it currently has. Now, transactions take a lot of time to process, and the fees are obnoxious.

This is where a Lightning Network comes in. A Lightning Network is more like making to call someone on speed dial – it will be fast reaching out to that person, right? All you need is to press “1” on your phone, and the person’s phone is already ringing.

With a lightning network, you don’t need to keep tabs with the number of transactions performed. It is necessary to know that Lightning Networks represent the next and advanced stage of Bitcoin payments. It’s regarded as the most significant way the ‘king coin’ will be scalable.

However, the 13 Lightning Networks that will solve the biggest hurdles in the Bitcoin network come from a blog post by Bitcoin business Bitrefill – a service that offers different products and services paid through lightning.

The top Lightning Network on the list is Atomic Multipath Payments (AMPs). This Lightning Network breaks a single payment into several smaller once and sends them to lightning channels.

Guy Swann, the anchor of the Cryptoconomy podcast, who also devoted two series of the show to introduce Lightning, stated:

“Payments become much more reliable, no longer limited to 1 channel capacity. [AMP] Removes the biggest (in my opinion) hurdles to payment issues, single-channel capacity & liquidity.”

However, lightning is an essential aspect of cryptocurrency. Developers are still working on improving every aspect of it (including its user-interface). These upgrades are moving up really fast, and very soon, Lightning will offer efficiency not just to Bitcoin, but to every other digital asset in the space – according to Atomic Swaps.

Swann also added that

“Channels don’t have only to send (Bitcoin). Any blockchain… with (Lightning) can connect payments across blockchains. Useful for decentralized swapping of coins, & sending bitcoins to pay invoices in multiple cryptocurrencies.”

The full list of the 13 Lightning Network upgrades are:

1. Atomic Multipath Payments (AMPs)
2. Atomic Swaps
3. Channel Factories
4. Dual-Funded Channels
5. Eltoo
6. Neutrino
7. Rendezvous Routing
8. Sphinx
9. Splicing
10. Submarine Swaps
11. Trampoline Payments
12. Turbo Channels
13. Watchtower

Even though the technicality of Lightning, it has gained much popularity this year (2019), due to the public program by a Bitcoin enthusiast Hodlonaut.

Overall, if you see Bitcoin as a form of payment, the Lightning Network can help offer solutions such as instant micropayments, increased anonymity, almost non-existent fees. These lightning upgrades today is a step higher to a better future for Bitcoin.