Faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions may soon be active.

A recent transaction posted on Twitter inside the offices of the prepaid phone payment provider, Bitrefill, used the Lightning network to charge a mobile (for real) at an almost instant speed with zero free, as tweeted

.

Although such a transaction is not yet generally available to the public and is still largely limited to command-line interfaces, it nevertheless provides insight into what the future might look like for the future. regular bitcoin users.

Mainnet Lightning Network paying my actual phone bill with actual Mainnet funds on @bitrefill. Speed: instant. Fee: zero. Future: Almost here. pic.twitter.com/futhn502Lp – Alex Bosworth (@alexbosworth) December 28, 2017

Lightning was one of the most watched bitcoin-scaling solutions. This is a new layer of abstraction at the top of the bitcoin protocol that allows transactions to happen faster and cheaper without sacrificing security. According to the Bitinfocharts data site, the average bitcoin transaction fee is currently $ 36.

Still, people who have seen Bosworth's tweet may have been confused because the use case is not visible to Bitrefill's customers. According to CEO Sergej Kotliar, the transaction took place when Bosworth tested the implementation of Bitrefill with one of the company's developers, by invitation. Bosworth needed to recharge his phone at that time, so he decided to test it with real money. It worked.

Kotliar said:

"Everything is ready to go on our side, but we are not launching it yet as long as a Lightning purse is not available for general use on mainnet."

Portfolios need to be updated to interact with the Lightning protocol layer, which has not usually happened yet, says Kotliar.

Bitrefill announced that he was implementing Lightning in August on his blog. Interested users and developers are able to test it now, with a fake bitcoin.

Based in Stockholm, Bitrefill is primarily committed to allowing people to pay for prepaid phones with cryptocurrency. "Our high-level business vision is to allow people around the world to use bitcoin as currency. In practice, we allow people to use their coins to buy everything that is digital. and money, so pay their bills, recharge their phones, vouchers, etc., "said his CEO at CoinDesk in an email.

Noting that implementing new innovations often poses thorny issues, the small Bitrefill team decided that it could help to quickly adopt Lightning, but that it also helped address concerns frequently expressed by its consumers. around transaction costs and delays.

"The recent mempolic surges have hit us hard, but over time, a bigger concern for us has been the confirmation deadlines," wrote Kotliar. "Here, instant lightning transactions allow us to make a truly great customer experience. Lightning solves not only the confirmation times, but also many other UX bitcoin issues."

Kotliar urged his counterparts not to wait for Lightning's implementation. He wrote:

"The integration with Lightning has been surprisingly easy, it works the same way as Bitcoin and fits perfectly with the way our business portfolios already work."

Photo of the lightning via Shutterstock.

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