THELOGICALINDIAN - Counterparty and broadcast accumulator belvedere Storj accept teamed up to advance offblockchain acquittal channels agnate to the muchanticipated Lightning Networks
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Storj & Counterparty Developing ‘Picopayments’
Payment approach technology, which allows users to transact instantly and achieve on the Bitcoin blockchain at a after stage, will additionally ability accessible Lightning Networks – advised to accomplish micropayments fast, bargain and commonplace.
This proof-of-concept accomplishing of a acquittal approach is alleged “Picopayments,” and will acquiesce users to transact in Storj’s badge SJCX, or added Counterparty-based assets, with added users.
Storj CEO Shawn Wilkinson said:
Storj (Storj.io) is an encrypted, broadcast accumulator belvedere area users can deeply abundance files and alike apps in the cloud, with no axial servers to advance or censor.
It launched a accessible beta in April and is now allotment of Microsoft’s Azure blockchain-as-a-service platform.
Instant Trading with Multiple Assets
The Picopayments abstraction is a dispatch bean appear Counterparty’s adept declared goal, which is to acquiesce bidirectional micropayments for Counterparty assets – that is, sending one asset in acknowledgment for bitcoin or added Counterparty assets.
Previously, all Counterparty arrangement affairs were acclimatized anon on the bitcoin blockchain, authoritative them accountable to the aforementioned 10-minute acceptance times.
Other Counterparty-based projects are watching the development of this technology, with a appearance to implementing it themselves in future.
“Micropayments technology can be a huge account to us, acceptance us to actualize new appearance not accessible before,” said Shaban Shaame, CEO of Everdreamsoft, makers of the accepted Spells of Genesis game.
Unidirectional vs. Bidirectional
Payment channels acquiesce users to “stream” payments to anniversary added about instantaneously, alienated Bitcoin’s 10-minute block acceptance times and transaction fees. At present, however, the technology allows alone for “unidirectional” payments – user A can pay user B as normal, but user B cannot pay user A aback through the aforementioned channel.
It means, at this stage, one asset can be beatific to addition user but cannot be swapped for addition altered asset.
Lightning Networks, which are still beneath development, are advised to be bidirectional. the Counterparty/Storj arrangement is unidirectional for now, awaiting added testing.
Storj developer Fabian Barkhau and Counterparty advance developer Ruben de Vries began accommodating a ages ago on cipher to absorb into Counterparty’s advertence applicant counterparty-lib. The cipher will abide testing on the Bitcoin testnet for a ages and, if successful, will be enabled on the Bitcoin mainnet.
“We acknowledge the action Storj took here,” said de Vries, adding:
Counterparty has appear a Payment Channels and Lightning Network FAQ folio for developers and added analytical parties to acquisition out more.
The Challenge with Micropayments
Bitcoin’s blocks accept often been abounding lately, due to the 1MB block admeasurement limit. Together with increases in price, this has apparent miner fees amplify to $0.50 or added per transaction.
This diminishes Bitcoin’s account as a micropayments platform, admitting the actuality Bitcoin has historically been accustomed as an enabler of internet business at this level. Settling every distinct micropayment anon on the Bitcoin blockchain is demanding for the arrangement and its resources, and some accept beat Bitcoin actuality acclimated for this purpose.
Other solutions accordingly charge to be developed to accomplish the micropayments promise. Uses for micropayments include: advantageous journalists, artists and added creators for their content, angled and upvoting, in-game tokens for amateur like SoG or SaruTobi, or alike for assuming internet searches.
Are acquittal channels and Lightning Networks the acknowledgment to bitcoin’s micropayments and fast-transaction problem?
Images address of Counterparty, Storj, keyword-suggestions.com
