Nubank, Latam’s most valuable bank, has partnered with Lightspark, a cryptocurrency-focused financial services company, to bring its customers access to Lightning Network transactions. With this partnership, Nubank expects to lower costs and get more flexibility for users to take advantage of its trading platform, according to Thomaz Fortes, Executive Director for Nubank Crypto. Nubank to […]
Bitcoin News
Lightspark CEO David Marcus: Lightning Network Will Become the World’s ‘Interoperability Neutral Settlement Layer’
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark, a company that offers lightning network (LN) related services, has stated that LN will become the “interoperability neutral settlement layer” for the world. Marcus declared that only Bitcoin is “neutral enough” to be implemented as the enabler between national payment systems, granting companies and institutions adopting it an edge for […]
Bitcoin News
Lightspark CEO Expects Bitcoin to Dominate AI-Related Monetary Transactions
David Marcus, the former president of Paypal and the current CEO of Lightspark, envisions bitcoin as the primary currency for artificial intelligence (AI) in the future. He describes bitcoin as “maximally neutral,” highlighting its advantages over conventional fiat currencies like the euro or the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin Poised to Become Default Currency for AI, Says […]
Bitcoin News
Lightspark Open Sources Email-Like Protocol UMA; Raises Debate on Compliance
Lightspark, a Lightning Network (LN) financial services company, has announced it has open-sourced Universal Money Address (UMA), a protocol similar to email, but for money. The protocol will be interoperable, allowing platforms to exercise due compliance on the transactions facilitated, an inclusion criticized by the Bitcoin community on social media.
Lightspark Opens UMA Protocol
Lightspark, a Lightning Network (LN) service provider focused on institutions, has announced it is open-sourcing code of Universal Money Address (UMA), a protocol that resembles email but for money. According to Lightspark, UMA allows each user of a wallet, exchange, or bank to have a unique, human-readable address to receive and send money in the form of the currency of their choice.
Lightspark states UMA presents several benefits compared to other money-transmitting protocols: it is available 24/7, with interoperable addresses, and offers low fees for currency conversion and transactions due to its usage of LN in the background. Also, it’s open-source and can be implemented by different companies and wallet providers freely.
UMA allows institutions to exercise due compliance, with its official page advertising that it “enables companies to provide global, fast, and compliant transactions while leveraging existing infrastructure.”
The Compliance Issue
The mention of the “compliant transactions” issue gave origin to a debate in the community, with many criticizing the idea of introducing compliance at a protocol level. David Marcus, co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, stressed the necessity of compliance for the growth of LN.
Marcus, who has profiled LN as a global payments network before, railed against this faction that believes anything that includes the word compliance is “blasphemy.” He stated:
If we truly want Bitcoin and Lightning to become the winning global settlement network for value on the internet, it must enable regulated entities to participate with the network and meet their compliance obligations.
Many disagreed with Marcus’ vision, stressing that compliance was not compatible with the Bitcoin ethos of freedom. Matt Ahlborg, a market research consultant at Bitrefill, declared:
Compliance often means racism when you are required to block hundreds of millions of people based of the country they were born in. KYC/AML [Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering] as it currently exists is un-american guilty until proven innocent system.
Marcus clarified that UMA was backward compatible with LN-URL and that any wallet implementing the protocol, even without complying with KYC/AML measures, could leverage UMA to make and receive transactions.
What do you think about UMA and its supposed benefits? Tell us in the comments section below.
Lightspark CEO David Marcus Profiles Bitcoin as Global Payment Network
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and co-creator of Diem, Meta’s failed cryptocurrency project, explained his intentions of turning Bitcoin into a global payments network. Marcus explained that there was no universal protocol for sending value over the internet and that we were still in the “fax era” of global payments.
Lightspark CEO David Marcus Wants to Get Payments out of the ‘Fax Era’
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and co-creator of the defunct Diem cryptocurrency project, has talked about how Bitcoin might become a global payments network. In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Marcus detailed the need for a universal platform to allow money transfers to be as easy as text or video communication using today’s messaging apps.
When consulted about the need for a global payment system, Marcus stated that we are still in the “fax era” of payments, with no universal way of transacting money from one place to another without using common fintech apps in a fragmented market.
Lightspark, Marcus’s new startup, focuses on implementing solutions for enterprises using the Lightning Network, an expansion layer for Bitcoin, to streamline and accelerate the payment experience on top of Bitcoin. Lightspark has partnered with several companies, including Xapo Bank, Rain, Flexa, Chainalysis, Notabene, and TRM Labs.
Marcus believes the size of the payment business is “ginormous,” with a potential market of trillions of dollars that currently move through legacy bank-dependent cross-border payment systems like SWIFT.
Marcus: Bitcoin Will Not Be the Currency ‘People Will Use to Buy Things’
Marcus also stressed that, according to his vision, bitcoin will not be the currency used to make payments in the future due to its anticipated growth in price. On the contrary, Bitcoin will serve as a platform to empower the exchange of value using other fiat currencies.
On how this will be achieved, Marcus declared:
A fragment of a bitcoin on top of Lightning is like a small data packer on the internet only for value. And so, you can exchange at the edges of the network and send dollars to someone who will receive Japanese yen on the other side.
He further explained that this use case could be sustained using Bitcoin alongside Lightning Network, with transactions settling in real-time at “very, very low costs.”
What do you think about David Marcus’ intentions of using Lightning Network to make Bitcoin a universal settlement layer? Tell us in the comments section below.
Lightspark CEO Outlines The Challenges Of Building On The Bitcoin Lightning Network
The CEO of Lightspark, David Marcus, has come forward to share his experiences on building atop the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Marcus noted the challenges the Lightning Network held for builders, stating that it was incredibly difficult and complex to develop software around the protocol.
The Bitcoin Lightning Network And The Challenges It Holds for Builders
According to the Lightspark CEO, a firm involved in developing payment solutions on the Lightning Network, a layer-2 scaling platform for Bitcoin, the firm decided to build on the network because of the “unique qualities” Bitcoin provides as the underlying network.
He explained that Lightspark’s objective is to build a cheap, very open, and interoperable protocol for virtual money/payments, and the Lightning Network is designed to be similar to layer 2 ZK-rollup for Bitcoin.
However, the former president of Paypal and co-creator of Diem noted that building on Lightning and Bitcoin is about five times more difficult than developing on other protocols. This is because the process to create software around the protocol is incredibly difficult and complex to do.
Nevertheless, with these objectives in mind, the platform committed to building on the Bitcoin Lightning Network and to do “Whatever it takes to reach their full potential.” But despite having high hopes about the prospects of the network, Marcus’s recent disclosures on Twitter have shown that building on the network was no easy feat.
Moving Forward Despite Difficulties
According to Marcus, part of the challenges is attributed to the rigidity of Bitcoin and the difficulties involved in altering its structure to contain new code in its base layers to meet the needs of specific solutions. He pointed out that Bitcoin’s layer 1 is particularly rigid and building a new opcode to mainlet was practically not possible.
However, despite these challenges, Lightspark remains upbeat, and instead of completely abandoning the Lightning Network protocol for other less complex chains, the platform intends to develop a payment solution that would still be applicable “100 years from now.”
The firm also intends to reorganize the process enabling crypto market users to connect to the Lightning Network. Although this will depend on their ability to put in place the necessary peer-to-peer payment channels.
Apart from Lightspark’s CEO, other players in the sector have also recognized the intricacies and general challenges of building software around the Lightning Network. Popular CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao has previously pointed out that integrating Lightning Network services on Binance was more complex because of the usage of on-demand invoices, which are different from pre-generated addresses.
Additionally, Fitatjaf, a prominent Bitcoin developer and founder of the decentralized social protocol Nostr, has also offered criticism of the Lightning Network, terming it a pile of complex and ugly hacks.
Lightspark CEO David Marcus States Building on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Is ‘Incredibly Complex and Hard’
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark, a company that builds business-grade solutions to facilitate payments on top of the Lightning Network, shared his experience in developing on top of the Bitcoin scaling layer. Marcus stated that it is “incredibly complex and hard to build software around this protocol,” acknowledging the constraints the Lightning Network presents for builders.
Lightspark CEO David Marcus Acknowledges Lightning Network Constraints for Builders
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark, a company that builds payments solutions on top of the Lightning Network, a second-layer scaling platform for Bitcoin, has given his opinion about the challenges that building on top of this protocol presents for companies.
Marcus, a veteran in the payments arena who was president of Paypal, head of Novi at Meta, and part of the Diem Board of Members, says Lightspark decided to build around the layer-2 protocol due to the “unique qualities” Bitcoin presents as an underlying network. However, he declared:
Building on Lightning and Bitcoin is likely at least 5x harder than building with other protocols. It’s so incredibly complex and hard to build software around this protocol.
Rigidity and Difficulty
Marcus attributes part of this difficulty to the rigidity of Bitcoin and the problems of changing its structure to include new code in its base layer, to accommodate the needs of specific solutions. On this issue, he stated:
Bitcoin layer 1 is incredibly rigid. Getting a new opcode to mainnet is almost mission impossible. Constraints are what they are.
However, instead of considering this difficulty a problem and abandoning the protocol to use other, less complicated chains, Lightspark took it as a challenge to build a payment solution that would be relevant “100 years from now.” Marcus concluded:
We recommitted ourselves to building on Bitcoin Lightning, and to doing whatever it took to realize its fullest potential. Because it’s time for the world to have a universal open protocol for payments.
Marcus is not the first to recognize the intricacies and overall difficulties of producing software around the Lightning Network. Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance, also stated that including Lightning Network services on Binance’s platform was “more complicated” than it might appear, due to the utilization of on-demand invoices, different from pre-generated addresses.
Fiatjaf, a Bitcoin developer and the creator of the decentralized social protocol Nostr, also recently criticized the Lightning Network, calling it an “inelegant pile of ugly and complicated hacks.”
What do you think about David Marcus’ vision of building on top of the Lightning Network? Tell us in the comments section below.
Xapo Bank Integrates Lightning Network Payments Through Lightspark Partnership
On March 2, Xapo Bank announced its partnership with Lightspark, a company led by David Marcus, former crypto boss at Facebook. The partnership aims to extend the utility of bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Xapo revealed on Thursday that it is the first fully licensed private bank to offer payments through the Lightning Network.
Xapo CEO Sees Lightning Network Integration as a Solution to High Fees and Long Transaction Times
Xapo has partnered with Lightspark to integrate the Lightning Network, according to an announcement sent to Bitcoin.com News. The company, founded in 2013, detailed that its clients can now pay for small purchases of up to 0 at any vendor that accepts Lightning Network payments. Additionally, Xapo is offering interest-bearing U.S. dollar bank accounts, with plans to soon offer the same for bitcoin. Xapo CEO Seamus Rocca believes that using the Lightning Network can help clients avoid long wait times and higher onchain fees.
“The average transaction confirmation time of one hour combined with potentially large fees during periods of high usage make the Bitcoin network unsuitable for small daily payments such as groceries,” Rocca said in a statement. “By integrating with the hyper-efficient Lightning Network, we are the first bank in the world to streamline this process and allow our members to pay for small purchases with bitcoin without having to convert to USD first.”
At the same time, Jack Dorsey’s payments firm, Block, launched a new Lightning Network service provider called “c=.” The c= venture notes on the website that it is partnering with wallets, businesses, and Lightning nodes. During the Xapo-Lightspark announcement, Rocca said that “against a backdrop of hyperinflation, economic uncertainty, and political turmoil,” the demand for bitcoin payment integrations continues to grow. “We need integrations like this that open up access to bitcoin payments,” the Xapo CEO insisted.
To use the Lightning Network via Xapo, clients need to have bitcoin (BTC) in their Xapo Bank App. Then, users can scan a Lightning Network invoice and pay any merchant with the application. Xapo detailed that the network will charge a small number of satoshis for the transaction. David Marcus, CEO and co-founder of Lightspark, explained that Xapo has been one of the firm’s closed beta partners.
“We’re delighted they chose Lightspark’s enterprise-grade solution to reliably send and receive payments on the Lightning Network without all the complexity and operational overhead that typically comes with running a node on it,” Marcus said. At the time of writing, the Lightning Network has a total capacity of 5,421.53 BTC.
What are your thoughts on Xapo Bank’s Lightning Network integration? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.