Engineering Lead at Blockstream, Christian Decker, announced the launch of Greenlight at the just concluded Bitcoin Conference.
He said that Greenlight is a trust-minimized Lightning Node as a Service, and also explained the vision and goal behind the project to the audience.
Blockstream is a blockchain technology company that is focused on building infrastructure for the emerging Bitcoin economy.
The company offers the Liquid Network, Bitcoin Satellite, crypto-financial infrastructure, and enterprise-class mining colocation, and employs prominent Bitcoin Core developers.
Why Greenlight
Lightning Network, known for its promise of fast and scalable Bitcoin transactions, has often been seen as a complex and technically challenging solution for users and developers.
Christian acknowledged this issue, starting the conversation by asking the audience about their experiences with Lightning.
The response revealed a lot of them, particularly newcomers, lean towards custodial wallets due to their ease of use, sacrificing some aspects of security and privacy in the process.
In response, Christian noted that the goal of the company is to encourage non-custodial setups, which offer maximum security and privacy.
To achieve this, Blockstream has developed Greenlight, a hosted non-custodial Lightning node as a service.
This innovative system aims to bridge the gap between the ease of custodial solutions and the security and privacy benefits of non-custodial setups.
Features of Greenlight
He went on to say that what sets Greenlight apart is its unique approach to trust minimization.
The system splits the Lightning node into three components: a client, a node running on Blockstream’s infrastructure, and signers that manage user keys.
When a user initiates a transaction, the client, controlled by the user, communicates with the node. The node then verifies the operation and computes the necessary state changes.
The key to trust minimization lies in users independently verifying and signing off on any changes involving their funds. This ensures that users have full control over their funds at all times.
The Engineering Lead added that Greenlight simplifies the onboarding process for users. Instead of requiring users to learn about Bitcoin and Lightning first, Greenlight allows users to get started with Lightning in a matter of seconds.
As users become more familiar with the technology, they can choose to transition to self-hosted setups, maintaining complete control.
Furthermore, he revealed that Blockstream offers a generous free tier for Greenlight, allowing developers to register up to 1,000 nodes at no cost.
This is a significant offering that caters to both individual hackers and small to medium businesses. Developers and companies interested in integrating with Lightning were encouraged to explore Greenlight and provide feedback to help shape its pricing model.
