At Lightspark Sync, Lightspark’s first partner summit on Thursday, the company announced new products and features that will allow users to make global payments using both bitcoin and fiat currencies.
The company announced that it has launched an alpha version of Spark, a Bitcoin Layer 2 interoperable with Lightning making it cheaper for users to board a non-custodial Bitcoin layer.
The company also announced new capabilities for onethe company’s open source, regulatory-compliant payment solution that makes sending money as simple as sending an email.
With UMA Extend, the accelerator network can serve as a bridge between traditional banks globally, while with UMA Auth and UMA Request, UMA users can tip, pay subscription fees and make payments to merchants within the apps.
Spark – Bitcoin Layer 2 from Lightspark
spark It is a layer 2 protocol for Bitcoin that takes advantage of state chain technology. In short, users can hold portions of Bitcoin off-chain, and transfer them by sending private keys to other users (rather than signing transactions with keys).
Lightspark created Spark to better support user onboarding for the Lightning Network, which typically requires an on-chain transaction for each payment channel as well as locking some amount of Bitcoin in those channels so users can send and receive transactions.
The second layer arose primarily from the frustration the Lightspark team encountered while trying to create a non-custodial Lightning wallet for users.
“Self-custodial Lightning wallets, especially at scale, are not viable,” Kevin Hurley, CTO at Lightspark, told Bitcoin Magazine.
“If you’re opening up channels to billions of users, the fees are going to skyrocket, and they’re going to fill up the block space. It’s just something that wouldn’t be reasonable and would lock up liquidity for every user,” he added.
Hurley also shared that Lightspark did not want to wait to enable Bitcoin opcodes (such as CheckTemplateVerify or TapleafUpdateVerify) that would make it cheaper to open new Lightning channels. Lightspark wanted to offer users a non-custodial option right away.
So, they built Spark, a Bitcoin Layer 2 that provides users with instant and cheap payments as well as a unilateral, permissionless exit to the Bitcoin base layer. It also allows for offline reception, or the ability to receive Bitcoin even when your device is not connected to the Internet.
Besides state chains, Spark also uses atomic swap technology. Its design is similar to that of mercury layer In that it allows ownership of Bitcoin UTXOs to be transferred off-chain while taking advantage of near-instantaneous, fee-free transactions, according to Hurley.
“Mercury has a lot of fundamental limitations that we have to overcome,” Hurley explained.
“At Mercury, for example, you can only move entire UTXOs. You have absolute time bombs where you have to come back to the chain at some point. So, you can only do so many transactions. We also pull different parts like connector transactions from coffinFor example, but other than that, we’re not similar to Ark at all.
“I think it’s hard to compare it to something, because it has a lot of different components, and I think the trade-offs that we’ve chosen to make are different than what a lot of other people have probably chosen to make.”
Besides Bitcoin, it is also possible to issue and use stablecoins on Spark. Or you can issue stablecoins via Root assets, LRC-20 or RGB on the base layer and move it to Spark.
However, the unique dimension of Spark is that the assets on layer 2 are all UMA enabled.
“You can now send non-reserved users directly to the bank accounts of UMA Extend users,” Hurley said, pointing to one of the new functions of UMA addresses.
UMA extension
UMA Extend integrates the Lightning Network with traditional banking systems, allowing users to make international bank transfers in seconds. Using this new technology, UMA Extend users can send any other UMA Extend user an instant cross-border bank-to-bank payment via Lightning as easily as sending an email.
“It is designed to facilitate the movement of funds across any currency,” Nicolas Cabrera, vice president of product at Lightspark, told Bitcoin Magazine. “I can be in Brazil and send my local currency, the Brazilian real, to a user based in Europe who wants to receive euros or someone in the US who wants to receive US dollars.”
Brazilian reais leave the sender’s bank account, and are converted into SATS by the bank (or entity such as… Zero hashif banks cannot handle cryptocurrencies), which are then received by the recipient’s bank, which converts them back into euros or US dollars from whatever currency the recipient holds in their bank account. All of this happens within 30 seconds or so, which is a dramatic shift from the two or three days it takes to settle international money transfers.
“This is the first time that the accelerator network has been linked to traditional banking methods and banking systems,” Cabrera added.
Uses of UMA Extend Real-time payments (RTP)which enables real-time payment to federally insured depository institutions in the United States, and similar services in other countries where the UMA Extend is available. All US banks using extended RTP support. Currently, Lightspark partners support 44 fiat currencies in over 100 countries.
Traditional financial institutions involved in these transactions will charge transaction fees, which tend to range between 0.25% and 0.5% – much cheaper than transaction fees. 6.35% of customers pay often To make international remittance payments via traditional financial rails.
Those interested in using UMA Extend can do so via This link.
Single authentication
At this event, Lightspark also introduced UMA Auth. This technology leverages OAuth (the backend technology when a website gives you the option to sign in to a third-party app or website using Google or Facebook), an open-standard authorization protocol that provides users with secure access to a website or app.
UMA authentication was created using Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC),protocol Developed by Alby team. NWC now supports UMA features such as cross-currency transactions and client application registration.
“We wanted to expand UMA’s coverage beyond wallets to applications,” Shreya Visamsetty, a member of the Lightspark engineering team working on UMA, told Bitcoin Magazine.
“UMA Auth is a new extension on top of UMA that allows you to integrate payments directly into the app. The idea is that it’s a lot like OAuth, but for money,” she added.
“All you have to do is enter your UMA address and then we set up a connection to your Lightspark wallet directly from the app. This gives the app access to communicate with your wallet and pay out funds directly from the app.
UMA Auth allows users to do everything from tipping their favorite artists to paying subscription fees to paying a friend through their favorite messaging app.
“Say I’m listening to Taylor Swift,” Visamsetty began.
“I can link my UMA account, and if my favorite song is playing, I can just tap a button and send it a little tip,” she explained.
“Tipping is one of the main uses we are pursuing with this product,” Cabrera said. “Lightning is again a good base layer for us because it allows small amounts to be transmitted.”
to request
UMA Request is another new dimension of UMA, one that allows any UMA user to request a payment from another UMA user.
Merchants can use a UMA request to request payment via invoice, which comes in the form of a QR code, for the product sold or service provided. UMA also supports zero-amount invoices, through which invoice recipients can pay any amount they want.
“Previously with UMA, the sender initiated the payment, but we flipped it,” Visamsetty said.
Another notable advantage of requesting a UMA is that it ensures that both parties involved in the transaction have a record of the transaction.
Requesting a UMA makes purchasing items online – especially across borders – easier and cheaper than using credit cards.
Go ahead
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and former head of PayPal, believes it’s only a matter of time until more banks and platforms come along to adapt new technologies like UMA Extend, UMA Auth, and UMA Request.
“Ultimately, if you build a more efficient network that enables global money movements to move faster and cheaper, in real time 24/7 without blackout dates, that is where the money and the financial system will flow and will flow,” Marcus told Bitcoin Magazine. “Players in the ecosystem will need to adapt to that.”
Regarding Spark, the Lightspark team is looking for user feedback on how to improve the product.
“We will be fully engaged with the community,” Hurley said.
“We want to make this completely open and completely open source,” he added. “Anyone can audit them, and edit their own versions if they want to.”
“We want this to be a collaborative thing where the community joins in, where we hope they will submit pull requests and help find things they want to improve.”
Christina Smedley, co-founder and chief marketing and communications officer at Lightspark, echoed Hurley’s sentiments when she discussed the new functionality of both Spark and UMA.
“We’re trying to (onboard) the next billion or billions, so it’s really important that what we do is open source and community-led,” Smedley told Bitcoin Magazine.