Bitcoin Lightning Network Implements C-Lightning Upgrade

The shortcomings of Bitcoin are becoming more apparent as more people use it, prompting the development team to seek solutions at a second layer. The Lightning Network is a major breakthrough in this regard, and in recent days, news of the upgrade to the C-Lightning version has been announced.

The Bitcoin development company Blockstream has announced the release of version 0.7.2 of its scalable software C-lightning.

According to a tweet by one of the company's researchers, this version is named Nakamoto, pre-approved by the US Congress, and includes support for dynamic plugin management, as well as various performance improvements and minor fixes.

Based on the official release notes, it currently ignores synchronization errors, meaning that in simple terms, it will still send even if the network is slow, instead of closing the channel directly as before. It supports signet and is available through GitHub.

Signet is a new test network for the Bitcoin blockchain that adds additional signature requirements for block validation. There is a default signet network, and anyone can run their own signet network as they wish.

As previously reported, C-lightning is just one implementation of the Lightning Network concept, which is an additional layer on top of the Bitcoin BTC blockchain that allows users to set up "temporary channels" for transactions. This mechanism clearly enables users to conduct transactions very quickly at extremely low costs.

Currently, there are three main developers of the Lightning Network: Blockstream, Lightning Labs, and ACINQ. Blockstream's c-lightning is written in the programming language C++, while Lightning Labs and ACINQ use Golang and Scala code, respectively.

This week, the mobile payment provider Square's cryptocurrency development branch, Square Crypto, hired Blockstream co-founder Matt Corallo as its team lead. Matt Corallo stated:

Excited to be joining the @sqcrypto team in the coming weeks. Trying different models to accelerate Bitcoin development is fantastic!

Further Reading

• Understand the Lightning Network in three minutes!
• Expert opinion: The real benefits of blockchain are here, and we've been overlooking them

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