Lightning Labs Announces Ind v0.6 Beta for the BTC Lightning Network

Lightning Labs has recently announced the latest release of Ind v0.6 Beta that includes many items developed after community feedback.

At the same time, these improvements will address some of the issues experienced by developers that were working on the Lightning Network over the last months.

Lightning Network Updated

According to a recent blog post released by Lightning Labs, they explain that one of the primare additions to this update is improved data backups. At the same time, another area of improvement is related to a series of enhancements in usability, routing and performance that will improve the whole Lightning experience for users.

In terms of safety, users will have the ability to backup user databases to protect funds in cases of data corruption or device loss. On the matter, the blog post explains:

“With “static” channel backups, the backup file only needs to be updated after new channels are created, as opposed to every time funds are sent or received. This is more convenient and simpler for users than “dynamic” backups that update with every transaction, but with the downside that SCB requires that channels be closed in data loss recovery scenarios.”

Announcing lnd v0.6 beta! New in this release:

⚡️ Static channel backup and recovery (SCB) 💽
⚡️ Improved performance for large nodes 🚀
⚡️ Routing optimizations 📈
⚡️ Lightning Loop ready 🔁
⚡️ Developers! Developers! 👩🏻‍💻👨🏾‍💻

Upgrade and read more here: https://t.co/uFyvYo6KYK

— Lightning Labs⚡️ (@lightning) April 16, 2019

At the same time, to make the Lightning Network accessible as possible to non-technical users, they are also working in order to automate the process of channel creation and management. This is why they have developed Ind’s Autopilot System.

This will include more sophisticated channel management heuristics such as node scoring.

As the Lightning Network expanded, developers were able to identify a series of routing tweaks and optimizations that would allow routing faster and more reliable. At the same time, developers will be able to have more control over routing with a new tool that has been implemented.

User-friendliness also requires developers to work in a network that is friendly for them to build the necessary infrastructure. This is why they have decided to make a number of changes to the RPC interface that are designed to make Ind easier for developers to work with. They ahve also fixed some bugs present on the LN.