Square Crypto announced on January 21 that they were creating a ‘Lightning Development Kit’ for use by bitcoin wallets and app developers. The kit will help them to easily integrate the layer 2 solution on their platforms. It will have language tools, demo apps and an API for smooth integration among other features.
Square Crypto, the bitcoin-focused arm of the company, objective is for bitcoin to become a widely used global currency. Therefore, this latest initiative is geared towards this goal by providing the tools that facilitate lightning transactions which are normally small, fast, and cheaper since they are occur off-chain. In their medium post, they acknowledge that bitcoin has some flaws that need improvements in order for it to become a mainstream currency. The kit thus offers some solutions to enhance security, privacy, scaling and bitcoin’s UX.
The new kit will enable existing wallets to support lightning thus eliminating the need for them to build separate wallets. Integration of the kit will enable support for multi-device, multi-application access to a single wallet. This will aid developers to create better user experiences. This is consequently expected to enhance onboarding of new users, including those without bitcoin technical knowhow.
Square Crypto stated that their mission is guided by the desire to solve one of the biggest problems cited by multiple wallet developers. Accordingly, they expressed a desire to have greater flexibility when integrating Lightning and this requires massive development. This is quite challenging for individual companies as it requires a lot of time and resources, that they may lack or are unwilling to expend. This however, is not the case for Square Crypto as it has the resources and comprises a team of open-source developers. As such their inspiration for creating the kit was drawn from the desire to meet their objectives by addressing a problem that no one else is willing to tackle.
Square Crypto used three criteria to select the initiative to undertake. Firstly, they sought to choose a project with an outsized impact on bitcoin. Secondly, the project should be able to meet an underfunded need in the bitcoin ecosystem and one that lacked a clear business model. The final criteria is that the project should be self-sustaining and with an ability to attract developers globally. Clearly, the project to create a Lightning Development Kit ticks all of these boxes.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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