Popular Bitcoin hot wallet to support Lightning Network

Electrum, a well-known Bitcoin hot wallet, revealed that their popular hot wallet will soon start supporting the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

According to a report, Thomas Voegtlin, the founder of Electrum, announced at the BIP001 blockchain event held in Odessa, Ukraine, that their Electrum wallet will soon add support for Lightning Network transactions, addressing most issues, with an official announcement expected shortly.

Thomas stated:

I'm not disclosing a specific release date at this time, but we've been working on it on GitHub for about a year, and we are now preparing to merge it into our main branch. This process will likely continue until the end of July, meaning the next version of the wallet will support Lightning Network transactions.

What is the Lightning Network? It is a "second layer" scaling technology for the Bitcoin network. Since Bitcoin transactions are currently slow, the Lightning Network can be seen as a way to enable lower fees and higher transaction throughput.

Thomas further explained:

Electrum has chosen not to go with the existing way of handling Lightning clients but has developed its own version. We want users to be in control of their funds.

The product will be similar to the Lightning wallet Eclair, which itself uses Electrum servers to transact with the Bitcoin network. Thomas also clarified that while Electrum uses its servers for Bitcoin transactions, it does not interact on the Lightning Network. Both parties must open a channel for a new round of transactions. This allows users to truly hold their funds rather than entrust them to others online.

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