Preface

You’ve heard of the Lightning Network right?!? No, well it’s great! Here is a simple video for beginners and here is a not so simple explanation for the technically inclined.

After Tadge’s Lightning Network talk at the Bitcoin Edge Dev ++, I was hooked. For the next month, with a vague high level understanding of the Lightning Network and Lightning Lab’s LND at my disposal, I decided to try and conquer decentralized poker utilizing the Lightning Network for fast, cheap bitcoin transactions. Long story short, the project was ambitious, and while we got a working demo, it was quite rough:

With the fire still burning, I decided to take on a much simpler project… I chose to take on a Starblocks clone and serve up some testnet ice cream.

How Can I Get Some Testnet Ice Cream?

If you follow these step-by-step instructions, you’ll be enjoying some Doge Food ice cream in no time!

Step 1: Head over to HTLC.me to setup your testnet Bitcoin Lightning Wallet.

Step 2: Navigate to Block and Jerry’s and fill your cart.

Step 3: Hit checkout, confirm the price is correct, then click the copy button to capture your invoice.

Step 4: Head back to your Lightning Web wallet and paste the invoice into the text field. You should see something very similar to this:

Step 5: Head back to Block and Jerry’s and you should see that your order was received (notice that the Cone count increased).

Step 6 (optional): Open a channel with my node for FASTER confirmations.

My LND node, SF Crypto Devs, as seen on https://explorer.acinq.co/#/

Pretty cool eyyy… I’d say the future of ice cream POS systems?!?!

Real footage of a baby trying Ethereum Split for the first time.

So Now You Want to Build Your Own Lapp?

If you are even half as excited about blockchain ice cream as the baby above, you are probably wondering… “where do I go to get started?!?”

I highly recommend Lightning Labs’ webpage; from a basic explanation of the protocol to API docs for interacting with LND node’s, they have it all.

If you want to check out my code, it is available here (if you run into any problems, please create an issue).

A Shameless Plug

If you live in SF and want to build stuff like this but have no idea where to get started, I am co-organizer for SF Crypto Devs and can help!

SF Cryptocurrency Devs is an engineers-only developer meetup for blockchain engineers seeking to learn about the innovation surrounding new and emerging applications of cryptography to digital currencies.

Stay decentralized!