The first Bitcoin wallet featuring full Lightning Network support went live on Google Play May 31 in a further milestone for the technology.
Lightning Payments Meet Android
The release, called simply Lightning Wallet, incorporates a fully operational Lightning node, providing for both on-chain Bitcoin and off-chain Lightning Network transactions.
Users will be able to take advantage of the increasingly well-populated network, benefits including near-instant sending and receiving of Bitcoin via dedicated channels for fees of less than one satoshi ($0.0000755141) – Bitcoin’s smallest unit. The app has received six positive 5-star user reviews so far.
“It is crucial to understand that Lightning Wallet is a completely standalone app, it is not a thin client to some centralized service,” the wallet’s description to potential users reads.
This most importantly means that your money is stored right on your phone and nowhere else which gives you a ultimate censorship resistance: no one can ‘freeze your account’ or cancel your transactions, but at the same time this makes you the only one responsible for securing your funds.
Mitigating Funds Loss Concerns
As Bitcoinist has reported throughout 2018 since Lightning’s mainnet release went live, both support and adoption have been brisk, despite the underlying technology remaining in an experimental phase.
While the potential for funds to go missing due to technical inconsistencies remains, Lightning Wallet developers claim they have mitigated such risks using a mnemonic passphrase setup.
“This is [the] first Lightning wallet on [the] market which offers off-chain data loss protection: in case of emergencies such as phone loss you will only need a mnemonic phrase to recover both on-chain Bitcoin balance and off-chain Lightning balance,” its Google Play description confirms.
In April, Lightning passed the symbolic adoption mark of 2000 nodes, with over 6000 channels currently open, handling a total network capacity of over $160,000.
Various consumer tools have gone live, while payment processor CoinGate recently announced it had also pivoted to add compatibility for merchants.
“Although still in its early stages and more suited to advanced, technical users, LN is, without doubt, the most awaited upgrade to the Bitcoin network,” the company wrote in a statement.
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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Google Playstore