Jack Dorsey's Cash App Integrates Bitcoin's Lightning Network

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bitcoin Magazine: Users of Block's mobile payments platform Cash App can now make instant and free bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network, the company tweeted on Monday. The integration of Bitcoin's second-layer protocol for faster and cheaper transactions was made possible by the Lightning Development Kit, an open-source project developed by another company owned by Block, Spiral. The Lightning Development Kit (LDK) is a flexible Lightning implementation geared towards developers who want to integrate Bitcoin's Lightning Network into their applications frictionlessly. It abstracts away complexities of Lightning, enabling developers to integrate the network easier and faster into their apps.

Jack Dorsey said in a fireside chat last week with Michael Saylor, the CEO of software intelligence company MicroStrategy, that having Cash App integrate Lightning through the Spiral's work was one of the proudest moments of his career. [...] Despite critics saying that Bitcoin cannot be used as a means of exchange due to its base layer's slow settlements, Lightning empowers Bitcoin to handle the smallest of payments for little to no cost. Now, all Cash App users can also leverage Lightning to send small payments instantly and for free. However, it seems that Cash App cannot yet receive Lightning transactions itself -- only send them.

poof

[hdyoung]

and it's GONE. Please step aside sir, this line is for people who actually have money to deposit.

Must I say it?

[OrangeTide]

Grifters gotta grift.

Sure, one complaint critics always seem to bring up about crypto is the atrocious latency to complete transactions. But really these alternative transaction protocols only hack around important design aspects of crypto. They ignore the original reason and security around them, and replace them with something that is faster and less robust. None of us are really all that sure that Lightning is secure, and we know that if there is fraud in the network that rolling it back or disputing it

Re:Must I say it?

[yope]

The Lightning Network is a so called "layer-2" payment protocol on top of the bitcoin blockchain. It is comparable to fiat payment processors such as Visa or PayPal, in that these batch many payments together before they settle via banks using fed-wire as the settlement layer weeks later, which would be analog to settling on the bitcoin blockchain (via opening and closing LN channels). The same way you don't need the finality of fed-wire for buying coffee, you also don't need the brutal nuclear-war security of a bitcoin on-chain transaction for every coffee or grocery-store visit you do. While Visa, the banks and fed-wire are centralized, controlled, permissioned, censorable and yes able to "roll things back", Bitcoin and LN are decentralized, uncensorable and permission-less. While there may be bugs in LN's infancy, since it is barely 4 years old, the system is working, and - without needing to grift - working quite well nowadays actually.

Re:

[Rei]

LN is not decentralized. Trust is outsourced to watchtowers, which can - yes - both surveil and rollback transactions. The technical requirements for watchtowers, and the need for users to trust them (rather than trusting any random person who starts up a watchtower) means you can expect them to centralize into a small number of large corporate services. You have to pay for their services. And malicious watchtowers have great power indeed, esp. with multi-watchtower collaboration.

Lightning has issues [bitcoinmagazine.com].

Re:Must I say it?

[jwdb]

You exaggerate the importance of watchtowers. They're helpful in guarding against a potentially-malicious counterparty, but are in no way required. Your own link says they're only useful if your node isn't online 24/7, and maintaining uptime is only really an issue for mobile devices. Even for mobiles, as long as they're not offline for more than 24 hours, they should have enough time to spot any malicious channel closures before the funds can be spent, without needing to resort to watchtowers.

And no, they can't roll back transactions. They can only prevent the counterparty from attempting to claw back spent funds.

The lightning network's not perfect, but your portrayal of it smells of FUD.

Re:

[Rei]

Given that anyone can be forced offline with a DDOS, exactly what is your point?

Re:

[yope]

Genuine question: How do you DDoS someone without a public IP adres?

Re:

[Rei]

If you're communicating with someone, that communication channel can always be flooded.

And exactly what percentage of Lightning users do you think will be using Tor to hide their IP anyway? Not that that helps - it actually makes the problem worse, because it concentrates everyone into a limited number of exit nodes. Tor has a lot of weaknesses, and some entire nation states (like China) block it. Even some western states are considering blocking it, over crime and terrorism concerns.

Re:

[Rei]

This also assumes that you can't just backdoor your way to getting someone's IP regardless. Bitcoin wallets are public. Wallet deanonymization is a thing. Websites can log peoples' IPs, and some common ones (like Wikipedia and many forums) even display them publicly in many situations. Conversely, if you know the general area of where a target lives but not their exact IP, you can target local ISPs. You can even random guess until you notice degradation in their traffic.

Re:

[yope]

If you're communicating with someone, that communication channel can always be flooded.

That would imply that the person I have a channel open with is flooding me. Highly unlikely and most probably not in his best interest either.

As for whether you use Tor or not, that depends on the level of privacy you want probably, but is not a requirement for not having a public IP address. You can run a LN node from behind a NAT without port forwarding or tunneling. Most mobile phones will probably be in such a situation. Only problem is that other people will not be able to find your node directly. Y

Re:

[Rei]

If the person you're communicating with is trying to cheat you, and knocking you offline helps him do that, of course it's in his best interest to do so.

Re:

[jwdb]

Let them DDOS you, wait for them to broadcast an invalid channel state, and then broadcast a justice transaction from on your local coffee shop wifi. Then publish the logs and ruin their node reputation.

My point is that you're fearmongering on a shaky foundation.

Re:

[yope]

So are bitcoin nodes... the idea is that you run your own. At least I do, so I really don't need to trust anyone. Now tell me again where I am lying?

Re:

[etash]

lightning doesn't work if everyone runs their node, only works if there are a few nodes, with BIG liquidity, which YOU TRUST.

Re:

[Rei]

It also defeats the entire "point", if there ever was one.

Bitcoin: "Nobody has to trust anyone else! Fully decentralized! No authorities! Freeedooom!"

Lightning: "Hey, let's outsource all fraud monitoring in our transactions to centralized third-party Watchtower nodes!"

Let's omit the fact that if you were okay with trusting third parties to confirm that transactions are legitimate, you can skip the entire resource-gobbling blockchain to begin with. Proof-of-authority allows for a near-zero-overhead system.

Re:

[etash]

exactly! the problem cannot be solved, its only two of those three: speed, security, decentralization. Lightning, proof of stake and others and just centralization with another name spoonfed to idiots.

Write Only Memory

[tizan]

I see they are using WOM...you can send money that has zero or infinite value (depending on who you talk to) somewhere. It is safely written down somewhere but you cannot read it yet !
 

The grand master plan of crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.

After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.

But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new fina

Someone explain to me how I would use this SDK?

[chuckdawit]

This is the first time I've posted on /. so please excuse anything not kosher. I'd like to know more about this Bitcoin integration with the Cash.app. I currently use Stripe for a website business where I charge my customers and then payout customers. FYI - Stripe takes a fee from the total amount for both receiving and paying out. I take an additional fee for each payout. Question - It would be nice to integrate a service (Ex. Cash.app) that didn't take any fee except mine, where I can collect money/Bitc

Re:

[NoMoreDupes]

Slashdot is mostly an opinion forum these days.

And blatant slashvertisments for crypto.

Re:

[astone3]

Slashdot is mostly an opinion forum these days.

And blatant slashvertisments for crypto.

well, that's *your* opinion.

Re:

[yope]

1BTC will always be 1BTC. If you keep the balance in BTC, but want to have a future balance in USD (to name an example), you will be subject to the exchange rate at that moment. If you want to avoid that, you'd need to convert into the currency you are interested in at the moment you receive the amount. This is no different than dealing with any two different currencies, except that BTC/USD is a lot more volatile than (for example) EUR/USD. Btw, Strike has a neat product that lets you use the lightning netw

Re:

[chuckdawit]

Wouldn't this Cash.app be similar Strike? And doesn't Strike have fees? I'm interested in a fee free API.

Re:

[yope]

There is no such thing as a free meal. There will always be _some_ fees. These might be very low (fraction of a cent in many cases), but putting liquidity into lightning channels has costs, and people tend to want to get some compensation for using that liquidity. In the case of Cash app, I guess they are absorbing that fee for now, in order to get more people to use it. Fees on Strike are also very low AFAIK. The difference between the two is that Strike uses the lightning network both for USD (or other fi

Free to the user

[Pinky's Brain]

In a mature market Lightning liquidity costs would create large costs for users, but as long as almost no one uses it Dorsey&Co can just subsidize it for PR.

Propaganda Ahoy!

[youngone]

Jack Dorsey said in a fireside chat last week with Michael Saylor, the CEO of software intelligence company MicroStrategy...

A fireside chat? Who the hell is buying that crap?
Does anyone really believe a couple of ruthless sharks, both of whom would sell their grandmother for the chemicals have just sat down together to chat in front of a camera?
As if people like that have friends or something.

But is it Web3 compliant?

[thesjaakspoiler]

Now that is the question!

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Basically no. Not that anyone can clearly define what is Web3-compliant.

When will slashdot stop pumping Bitcoin

[davvr6]

Any one with half a brain can see that Bitcoin is attack on democracy. The inability to print money while a wet dream for a Machiavellian fascist is a night mare for a democratic economist. So once and for all, is slashdot o the side of good or just a joyful participant in the overtaking of democracy?

Re:

[yope]

You'd be surprised about how the number of democrats and progressives embracing bitcoin is growing right now. That narrative that Bitcoin is somehow linked to right-wing or fascist politics is retarded, specially in the light of the fact that among the countries with the highest percentage of the population using Bitcoin are countries like Venezuela, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Ukraine, etc...

Re: When will slashdot stop pumping Bitcoin

[davvr6]

Bitcoin and Democracy cannot co-exist. Unless the monetization of everything counts.

@Jack: I gave em the idea bmp...

[irreverant]

âsï #Blockchain, copy paste .