Bitcoin wallet platform Electrum on Monday announced that its new version would add support for the Lightning Network.
The platform confirmed that it would merge its lightning node with the master branch, which will support the side-chain protocol without the additional need for any third-party applications.
The next release of Electrum will support Lightning Payments . Our lightning node implementation has been merged into Electrum's master branch.
— Electrum (@ElectrumWallet) October 14, 2019
Scaling Bitcoin's Blockchain
First proposed in 2016, Lightning Network is a second layer protocol for Bitcoin payments. It was introduced to increase the scalability of the original blockchain network by taking the transaction away from the main blockchain.
Mainly designed to handle micro day-to-day payments, the protocol also drastically reduces the transaction fees.
The wallet platform also confirmed that the implementation will be based on popular programming language Python and was developed in-house.
Yes.
— Electrum (@ElectrumWallet) October 14, 2019
Though Lightning protocol has created a buzz in the crypto world, it is still far from perfect as many programmers pointed out bugs on the network.
Last month, Finance Magnates reported that a major Lightning Network vulnerability was reported by Rusty Russell, one of the authors of Lightning protocols specification, on a Bitcoin Wallet called Eclair.
Upgrade #lightning nodes please! c-lightning < 0.7.1, lnd [#lessthansign] 0.7, eclair [#lessthansign]= 0.3 vulnerable:https://t.co/4E2hHUy386
— TheRustyTwit (@rusty_twit) August 30, 2019
Developed in 2011, Electrum is one of the earliest and widely-used Bitcoin wallets available. Since then, the developers released many versions, adding more features. The official website of the wallet, however, suggests the users update their wallets to the latest version as older versions are susceptible to phishing attacks.
Earlier this year, Bitfinex also announced its plans to launch Tether on the Lightning Network.
Meanwhile, blockchain startup ACINQ earlier this month raised $8 million in a Series A round to develop Lightning Network-based products.
