By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 24th, 2024
With the LDK, Spiral aims to foster BTC adoption by “providing a way for people in different parts of the world … to store value and engage in economic activity.”
On December 7, a subsidiary of Jack Dorsey‘s Square Inc (NYSE: SQ) – Spiral – released a short video revealing its Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Development Kit (LDK). In the video, the team behind the LDK explained why they came with the idea of creating the kit and how it can improve Bitcoin.
We made a very short documentary about the Lightning Development Kit, our big project these last couple of years. We wanted a puppet to perform @jack’s parts but settled for actual @jack: https://t.co/q6eW4PDuNW
— Spiral (@spiralbtc) December 6, 2021
Spiral project manager Conor Okus stated:
“The Lightning Development Kit is a way to easily integrate instant bitcoin payments into any application.”
Further, Spiral leader Steve Lee added:
“When our team formed, we went out and interviewed dozens of wallet projects and developers. What we learned is that they were having a lot of problems adding Lightning Network capabilities.”
According to Spiral, its Bitcoin Lightning Development Kit is the simplest way to integrate Lightning into your Bitcoin wallet. Basically, it is a kind of a generic library that allows you to build a Lightning node without needing to worry about getting all of the Lightning state machine, routing, and on-chain punishment code (and other chain interactions) exactly correct. The kit is easy to customize as it supports multiple languages, focuses on custom-tailored user experiences, as well as offers custom persistent storage.
In addition, Bitcoin Lightning Development Kit abstracts low-level Lightning logic away, removing barriers for implementing the Lightning Network. As a result, developers can focus on their applications’ inner workings. Besides, programmers can seamlessly leverage a flexible implementation of Bitcoin’s layer-2 protocol to plug into the scaling network. When implemented, LDK also enables instant BTC payments on games, apps, and other BTC apps.
With the LDK, Spiral aims to foster BTC adoption by “providing a way for people in different parts of the world … to store value and engage in economic activity.”
Square Rebranding
Last week, Square changed its name to Block. As the company explained, its focus shifted to blockchain technology, and rebranding would differentiate the Square brand, originally built for the seller business, from the corporate entity. There was no organizational changes. Square, Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 are maintaining their respective brands. Besides, the foundational workforce including such teams as Counsel, People, and Finance, are still guiding the ecosystem at the corporate level. However, along with the name change, Square Crypto (Square’s crypto-centric arm) changed its name to Spiral.
As for the nearest plans of Square, or Block, the company is considering the development of a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange for trading Bitcoin, fiat money or real-world goods.
