![\"Lightning](\"http:\/\/forklog.media\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/bitcoin-lightmimg-network.jpg\")
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Bitrefill was one of the first companies to embrace Lightning Network for its mobile phone top-up service, however, as CEO Sergej Kotliar admits, the technology has its own tradeoffs and shouldn\u2019t be considered \u201cthe entire solution of all the scaling problems forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bitrefill recently began selling gift vouchers for Amazon and other brands \u2014 effectively opening up Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) payments to almost any item. This technology has been getting some attention as of late for its impressive growth in recent months, and for Bitrefill it was a quite straightforward decision.<\/p>\n
In an interview<\/a> with Bitcoinist Sergej Kotliar said:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been closely monitoring the technology, it\u2019s something that has been known since a long time back that payment channels would be the way to scale bitcoin to the masses\u2026 So when the first working prototypes became available it was a no-brainer to start tinkering with the technology.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to him, Lightning is not the only thing the Sweden-based company done to improve payment experience.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve gone quite a bit with just optimizing bitcoin payments and wallet management, integration different altcoins, off-chain integrations and such things as well. What Lightning does for UX is that it separates away most of the tricky stuff like getting transactions confirmed etc. from the merchant \u2013 all that is handled inside the wallet. So when the user comes to us all trouble has already been solved so to speak, and their experience with us is simple. This is to be compared to traditional cryptocurrency payments where issues can happen due to the sending wallet, the state of the network, or due to something within our control.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe neat thing about all of that is that Lightning is \u201cbitcoin-like\u201d, in the sense that anyone can run it, it\u2019s an open protocol, doesn\u2019t need any other coins, deals, consortiums or proprietary tech of any kind.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sergej Kotliar insists LN is definitely ready enough for early adopters already, and the experience with the Android wallets available is already quite good, despite being beta. The main things missing, according to him, are good wallets for desktop and\/or iOS, that doesn\u2019t require running a full node.<\/p>\n \u201cFor transfers between exchanges and other exchanges all the needed pieces are already in place, so just waiting for it to start happening soon,\u201d<\/strong> he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When asked which technology that LN enables he likes most, like cross-atomic chain swaps, submarine swaps etc., Sergej Kotliar said he\u2019s \u201cmost excited about simple payments, getting a good user experience for bitcoin users for paying and getting paid for stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce that stuff is sorted I think we as a community should direct our attention to using it to help people earn and receive coins. We have some prototypes in the pipeline in that direction, but it\u2019s generally a large question that we will start pushing harder soon,\u201d<\/strong> he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n However, Sergej Kotliar also admits LN has tradeoffs, and different people have different views when valuing different tradeoffs.<\/p>\n \u201cLightning definitely has tradeoffs as well, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the entire solution of all the scaling problems forever. But it\u2019s a good way to grow another 10x or 100x maybe until someone much smarter finds the next way to optimize it and so on.\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Follow ForkLog on Twitter<\/a><\/span> and Facebook<\/a><\/span>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bitrefill was one of the first companies to embrace Lightning Network for its mobile phone top-up service, however, as CEO Sergej Kotliar admits, the technology has its own tradeoffs and shouldn\u2019t be considered \u201cthe entire solution of all the scaling problems forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"human_written","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18,709,325,843],"class_list":["post-5631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitrefill","tag-lightning-network","tag-sergej-kotliar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"231","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7044,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions\/7044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}