Lightspark Announces New Bitcoin L2 and Upgraded UMA Capabilities

Credit : bitcoinmagazine.com

At Lightspark Sync, Lightspark’s first accomplice summit on Thursday, the corporate introduced new merchandise and options that permit customers to make international funds utilizing each bitcoin and fiat.

The corporate introduced that it has launched an alpha model of Spark, a Bitcoin Layer 2 that’s interoperable with Lightning and makes it cheaper to provide customers entry to a non-custodial Bitcoin layer.

The corporate additionally introduced new capabilities for UMAthe corporate’s open-source, regulatory-compliant fee answer that makes sending cash as simple as sending an electronic mail.

With UMA Lengthen, the Lightning Community can function a bridge between conventional banks worldwide, whereas UMA Auth and UMA Request permit UMA customers to tip, pay subscription charges, and make funds to retailers inside apps.

Spark – Lightspark’s Bitcoin layer 2

Spark is a Layer 2 protocol for Bitcoin that makes use of statechain expertise. Principally, customers can maintain fractions of bitcoin off-chain and switch them by sending personal keys to different customers (as an alternative of signing transactions with the keys).

Lightspark created Spark to raised help person onboarding to the Lightning Community, which usually requires an on-chain transaction for every fee channel, in addition to locking a specific amount of bitcoin in these channels so customers can ship and obtain transactions.

Layer 2 got here primarily from the frustration the Lightspark crew encountered when making a non-custodial Lightning pockets for customers.

“Self-custodial Lightning wallets, particularly at scale, are merely not viable,” Lightspark CTO Kevin Hurley informed Bitcoin Journal.

“In the event you open channels to billions of customers, prices will skyrocket and replenish the block house. It is simply one thing that is not affordable and also you’re tying up liquidity for each single person,” he added.

Hurley additionally talked about that Lightspark did not need to wait to allow Bitcoin opcodes (like CheckTemplateVerify or TapleafUpdateVerify) that may make it cheaper to open new Lightning channels. Lightspark needed to right away present customers with a no-custody possibility.

That is why they constructed Spark, a Bitcoin Layer 2 that provides customers low-cost, on the spot funds, in addition to a permissionless, one-sided exit to the Bitcoin base layer. It additionally permits offline receiving, or the power to obtain bitcoin even when your system will not be related to the web.

Along with statechains, Spark additionally makes use of atomic swap expertise. The design is just like that of Mercury layer in that it permits the off-chain switch of possession of Bitcoin UTXOs whereas benefiting from near-instantaneous and cost-free transactions, Hurley stated.

“Mercury has a number of core limitations that we’re shifting previous,” Hurley explains.

“For instance, in Mercury you may solely switch total UTXOs. You might have absolute time bombs the place you must return on the chain at an absolute time. So you may solely perform a restricted variety of transactions. We additionally extract numerous items, corresponding to connector transactions Arkfor instance, however in any other case we’re nothing like Ark,” he defined.

“I feel it is onerous to check it to something as a result of it has a number of totally different elements, and I feel the tradeoffs we have made are totally different than many others.”

Along with bitcoin, it’s also attainable to situation and use stablecoins on Spark. Or you may spend stablecoins by way of Taproot assets, LRC-20 or RGB on the bottom layer and switch it to Spark.

Nonetheless, a novel dimension of Spark is that the belongings on layer 2 are all UMA compliant.

“Now you can have non-custodial customers ship on to UMA Lengthen customers’ financial institution accounts,” says Hurley, mentioning one of many new options of UMA Addresses.

UMA extension

UMA Lengthen integrates the Lightning Community with conventional banking methods, permitting customers to make worldwide financial institution transfers in seconds. With this new expertise, UMA Lengthen customers can ship every other UMA Lengthen person a near-instant cross-border fee from one financial institution to a different by way of Lightning, as simple as sending an electronic mail.

“It’s designed to facilitate the motion of cash in any forex,” Nicolas Cabrera, VP Product at Lightspark, informed Bitcoin Journal. “I can ship my native forex in Brazil, the Brazilian Actual, to a person in Europe who needs to obtain Euros or to somebody within the US who needs to obtain USD.”

The Brazilian reals go away the sender’s checking account and are transferred by the financial institution (or an entity corresponding to Zero hashif the banks cannot contact crypto), that are then obtained by the recipient’s financial institution, which converts it again into Euros, USD or no matter forex the recipient has of their checking account. All this occurs in about thirty seconds, a radical shift from the 2 to 3 days it typically takes for worldwide cash transfers to be processed.

“That is the primary time the Lightning Community will probably be related to conventional banking routes and banking methods,” Cabrera added.

UMA Lengthen makes use of Real-time payments (RTP)which permits real-time funds for federally insured depository establishments in america, and comparable companies within the different nations the place UMA Lengthen is out there. All banks within the US that use RTP help Lengthen. At present, Lightspark’s companions help on-ramps and off-ramps for 44 fiat currencies in additional than 100 nations.

The standard monetary establishments concerned in these transactions will set the charges for the transactions, that are sometimes between 0.25% and 0.5% – considerably cheaper than the 6.35% customers pay often to make worldwide cash transfers by way of conventional monetary rails.

These all in favour of utilizing UMA Lengthen can accomplish that by way of this link.

UMA auth

Throughout the occasion, Lightspark additionally launched UMA Auth. The expertise makes use of OAuth (Open Authentication) expertise (the backend expertise for when an internet site permits you to log in to a third-party app or web site with Google or Fb), an open-standard authorization protocol that gives customers with safe gives entry to an internet site or software.

UMA Auth is constructed utilizing Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC)a protocol developed by Alby’s team. NWC now helps UMA options corresponding to cross-currency transactions and consumer app registration.

“We needed to increase UMA’s protection from wallets to purposes,” Shreya Vissamsetti, member of the Lightspark engineering crew engaged on UMA, informed Bitcoin Journal.

“UMA Auth is a brand new extension on prime of UMA that permits you to combine funds instantly into an software. The concept is that it is quite a bit like OAuth, however for cash,” she added.

“All you must do is enter your UMA handle and we are going to hook up with your Lightspark pockets instantly from the applying. That provides the app entry to speak along with your pockets and usher in funds instantly from the applying.

With UMA Auth, customers can do all the things from tipping their favourite artists to paying a subscription payment or paying a buddy by means of their favourite messaging app.

“Say I am listening to Taylor Swift,” Vissamsetti started.

“I can hyperlink my UMA account, and when my favourite music performs, I can simply faucet a button and ship her an excellent little tip,” she defined.

“Tipping is among the key makes use of we’re pursuing with this product,” Cabrera stated. “Lightning is once more a very good base layer for us as a result of you may ship small portions with it.”

UMA request

UMA Request is a brand new dimension of UMA, which permits any UMA person to request a fee from one other UMA person.

With UMA Request, retailers can request funds by way of an bill, within the type of a QR code, for the product bought or service offered. UMA Request additionally helps zero-sum invoices, which permit bill recipients to pay any quantity they want.

“Beforehand at UMA, the sender initiated the fee, however we reversed it,” stated Vissamsetti.

One other notable characteristic of UMA Request is that it ensures that each events concerned within the transaction obtain a report of the transaction.

UMA Request makes buying gadgets on-line – particularly throughout borders – simpler and cheaper than utilizing bank cards.

Come on

Lightspark’s CEO David Marcus, the previous president of PayPal, believes it is just a matter of time earlier than extra banks and platforms undertake new applied sciences corresponding to UMA Lengthen, UMA Auth and UMA Request.

“In the event you in the end construct a extra environment friendly community that permits international cash actions to maneuver sooner, cheaper and in actual time 24/7 with out blackout dates, then that is the place the cash goes to circulate and the monetary system and the ecosystem gamers will merely discover themselves there should adapt to,” Marcus informed Bitcoin Journal.

As for Spark, the Lightspark crew is searching for suggestions from customers on how they will enhance the product.

“We’re going to be totally engaged with the group,” Hurley stated.

“We need to make this utterly public, utterly open supply. Anybody can audition it and make their very own variations of it if they need,” he added.

“We wish this to be a collaborative venture the place the group will get concerned, the place they hopefully submit pull requests and assist discover issues they need to enhance.”

Christina Smedley, co-founder and Chief Advertising and marketing and Comms Officer at Lightspark, echoed Hurley’s sentiment when discussing the brand new options of each Spark and UMA.

‘We’re making an attempt [onboard] the following billion or a number of billion,” Smedley informed Bitcoin Journal, “so it is actually essential that what we do is open supply and community-led.”