Key facts:
The Taproot Protocol Powered the Lightning Loops Update
Lightning developer Alex Bosworth reported the update on his Twitter account.
Lightning Loop, the bridge between Bitcoin (BTC) and the Lightning Network (LN), now has the capacity to make withdrawals to the main chain for over 1 BTC, in what is presented as a notable expansion of the capacity that the channels will now have. to speed up payments with LN.
According to informed by Lightning developer Alex Bosworth, Loop can now add up to 40K $1 equivalent payments to the Bitcoin mainchain, with a cheap and immediate withdrawal transaction, without the need to close the channel.
This figure only illustrates the current capacity of this limit, since it derives from the fact that today one BTC is worth approximately USD 40,000, as can be seen in the CriptoNoticias price calculator.
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In this precise case, Bosworth refers to the operation loop-out, which allows freeing up a channel’s capacity by sending funds to a Bitcoin-enabled wallet. In general, this is one of the two operations that complement Lightning Loop and that It is intended for merchants.
However, this is not the only operation that could be done, since Loop would allow recharging 1 BTC to channels that have already been created with this Lightning implementation, with an operation called Loop In.
Initially, when Lightning Loop hit the market in 2019, as little as 0.01 BTC could be withdrawn. After updates and improvements, the threshold went to 0.02 BTC, then to 0.042 BTC, and then to 0.1 BTC, as a limit for recharges and releases from Lightning Network channels.
Therefore, the fact that the limit has now risen to 1 BTC speaks volumes about the fact that the application is being used and, therefore, making it easy to use Lightning among all users.
Lightning Loop is a mechanism that allows users to reload or empty their channels in Lightning without closing them. This through transactions that are executed directly on LN to and from the main Bitcoin chain.
This technology allows several transactions to be executed without the need to close a channel and open a new one for each operation. This promotes the reuse of channels and generates a consequent stability in the Bitcoin payment network..
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Taproot pushes Loop update
According to Alex Bosworth, who was one of the creators of this Lightning Labs product, this new version of Lightning Loops was made possible by the Taproot protocol, the latest Bitcoin update.
“Taproot updates make this more efficient,” he said, detailing that the implementation has already been tested on the testnet and released on the mainnet.
Taproot, which came to the Bitcoin protocol last year, enables the first cryptocurrency network to have tools to transactions more efficient, less expensive and more private.
The increase in the limit in Lightning Loop had not been seen since May 2020, the date when the threshold went from 0.042 BTC to 0.1 BTC, in the Loop Out formulation, that is, from LN to Bitcoin, as reported by CriptoNoticias.