The crypto arm of Square, recently rebranded as Block, showcased its Lightning Network Development Kit (LDK), designed to power the Bitcoin network.
Jack Dorsey’s Spiral team released a video on Dec. 7 demonstrating the capabilities of the Bitcoin Lightning Network and the Lightning Network Development Kit (LDK).
The LDK has been designed to allow developers to seamlessly plug their applications into the Lightning Network on mobile devices and point-of-sale terminals.
LDK supports native APIs in Rust, C, Swift, Java, and Kotlin coding languages. This allows developers to customize their wallet apps for users in the language of their choice, while also removing the need for separate Bitcoin and Lightning wallets.
In the video, the former Twitter CEO describes LDK as a project that "makes it easy for any developer in the world to build a wallet."
We made a short video about the Lightning Network Development Kit, which has been our big project for the past few years. We wanted to use a doll to play the role of Jack, but ended up choosing the real Jack.
— Spiral (@spiralbtc) December 6, 2021
In the video, doll Jack Dorsey interacts with shop assistants and shop owners by paying for services via the Lightning Network (LN). He uses his mobile LN wallet app to pay for a nose ring and a movie ticket, while the video periodically cuts to the Spiral team talking about the merits of Bitcoin and LN.
Spiral, formerly known as Square Crypto, has been developing bitcoin wallet solutions since its inception in 2019. In addition to LDK, Spiral is also working on a bitcoin development kit that allows for cross-platform mobile wallet interaction.
The Lightning Network is bitcoin's second-layer scaling solution, which "turns bitcoin into a real payment system," said Spiral project manager Haley Berkoe.
Spiral’s Conor Okus expects its LDK to increase the adoption of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network by “giving people around the world a way to … store value and engage in economic activity.”
The product launch comes at a lucky time for Lightning users, as the number of nodes on the Lightning Network is at an all-time high. The latest reading from Bitcoin Visuals puts the number of nodes with active channels on the Lightning Network at 18,905.
In the past 3 months, the total number of nodes has increased by 23%, adding 3534 new nodes. According to 1ML’s data, the current network capacity of LN is 3,285 BTC, or about $166 million.
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