Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, has incorporated Segregated Witness, or SegWit, support for Bitcoin (BTC) deposits. The SegWit support was extended to deposits on Christmas Eve, Binance said in an official statement. The protocol upgrade was initially enabled only for withdrawals. Effective immediately, Binance users can transfer funds to a SegWit (bech32) address by selecting the BTC (SegWit) network. Binance explained: “Please note SegWit should help reduce fees; however, if you incorrectly send incompatible assets to the address, your funds will not be recoverable and will result in permanent loss.” Implemented in 2017, SegWit is …

Major United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced on Wednesday that it will integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network in 2021. Kraken emphasized that the integration will drive significant improvements in speed and fees, claiming that Lightning allows Bitcoin (BTC) “to process millions of transactions per second." Speaking to Cointelegraph, Kraken’s lead Bitcoin strategist, Pierre Rochard, revealed that Lightning will first be integrated for withdrawals during the first half of 2021, bringing down transfer fees from roughly $10 per transaction to about one penny — just enough to prevent spam transactions — and allowing "instant" withdrawals. Rochard noted that deposit functionality …

Lightning network node operators running LND versions prior to the Oct. 1 version 0.11 upgrade have been urged to upgrade immediately after a vulnerability was discovered affecting LND versions 0.10 and below. The vulnerability was made public in an Oct. 9 announcement from Lightning engineer Conner Fromknecht, head of cryptographic engineering at Lightning Labs. Fromknecht said: “While we have no reason to believe these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild, we strongly urge the community to upgrade to lnd 0.11.0 or above ASAP,” Few details have been revealed so far, with Fromknecht assuring that the vulnerabilities will be disclosed …

Independent Bitcoin Lightning developer, Joost Jager, has outlined an exploit of the micro-payments network that could result in channels being compromised with very little effort and negligible cost. However, he said he’s hard at work on a possible solution. 1/ Lightning is great, but can't say it is battle-tested. If script kids would be interested, they could take down those shiny new 5 BTC #wumbo channels with negligible cost and no effort at all. pic.twitter.com/9PTkxfF042 — Joost Jager (@joostjgr) September 22, 2020 Jager specifies that the attack could be carried out on wumbo channels, which essentially allow larger transactions between …

A platform that claims to offer the world’s biggest digital shop for crypto users has announced that it now supports Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Uquid notes this additional blockchain layer helps to speed up transactions while making them cheaper, eliminating two of the main drawbacks of using BTC directly. The shop boasts 35,000+ digital products, with new items added on a daily basis. According to the team, discounts of up to 60% are available on its range. “At the Uquid digital shop, we’re very excited about the Lightning Network. We believe this technology is the next step for future payment systems,” …

The growing tokenization of Bitcoin and the emergence of yield farming has propelled the growth of the decentralized finance sector over the past three months according to ConsenSys. The second quarter report into Ethereum-based DeFi emphasizes the significance of the total number of tokenized BTC overtaking the sum of BTC on Bitcoin’s own layer 2 scaling solution, Lightning Network. Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) represents more than two-thirds of the tokenized BTC on Ethereum, but the report notes there has been a recent proliferation of Bitcoin tokenization protocols. Around 3,000 of more than 11,000 BTC on Ethereum was tokenized through renBTC, sBTC, …

Jack Mallers, the developer of the Zap Lightning Wallet, announced on Thursday his new app for iPhone, Android and Chrome, which allows users to send and receive Bitcoin (BTC) and Lightning Network payments directly from and to a bank account. Strike, which has now entered the public beta phase, enables interaction with the Bitcoin and Lightning protocols with no wallet, seed, channels, liquidity or white papers, while Know Your Customer protocols are kept to a bare minimum. Mallers wants Bitcoin to reach mainstream adoption. To this end, he created Zap in 2018 — one of the first desktop wallets making …

A study published on June 29 revealed a way to drain Bitcoin (BTC) wallets’ funds on the Lightning Network by exploiting a bottleneck in the system. According to the “Flood & Loot: A Systemic Attack On The Lightning Network” paper, Jona Harris and Aviv Zohar from the Hebrew University in Israel evaluated a systemic attack on the Lightning Network that allows for the theft of BTC funds that were locked in payment channels. Flooding the blockchain with simultaneous attacks The Lighting Network is used to send payments through intermediary nodes, which can be leveraged to steal Bitcoin. This usually must …

Most people in the cryptocurrency world are aware that network validation often comes in one of two forms: proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. There are others, but these systems are common and power many of the most popular blockchains. They take the same basic problem — verifying transactions — and solve it in unique ways. However, both offer different solutions to the ongoing debate over scaling. Does one have a true advantage over the other, or are they just different philosophies? We’ll take a look at both. Proof-of-work, explained Most people have heard of Bitcoin (BTC) “miners,” but just what do they …

One thousand Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) were minted today on the Ethereum network (ETH) — a single transaction that represents more U.S dollar value than the entire Lightning Network. It brings the total amount of Bitcoin now locked in WBTC tokens to 2,300, compared to the roughly 927 Bitcoin (BTC) locked on the Lightning Network. According to decentralised finance data aggregator DeFi Pulse, the USD value of wBTC is $20.7 million, making it the eighth-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol. wBTC grows alongside DeFi Wrapped Bitcoin is an ERC-20 token that allows users to access popular ETH-based DeFi protocols using the value …

The Lightning Network has been live for a few years now, but Bitcoin exchanges still haven’t joined the party — at least for the most part. Bitfinex is the most notable exception to the rule, as they added Lightning Network in December of last year. During her appearance at the Kraken Block Drop VR Halving Party on Sunday, Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark shed some light on why the vast majority of exchanges haven’t implemented this method of paying faster, cheaper Bitcoin transfers. “When Bitfinex launched [Lightning support] in December that was, to me, a really exciting step,” said Stark. …

Speaking at Virtual Blockchain Week, famed venture capitalist Tim Draper confirmed that he is sticking to his six-figure Bitcoin (BTC) price prediction. Back in 2018, Tim Draper made a bold public call that the price of Bitcoin would reach $250,000 by the end of 2022 or early 2023. As of today, he’s sticking to it: “That's my prediction. Sticking with it. I'm very confident that that is going to happen. That’s happening. It's kind of funny.” He cites a couple major reasons that might drive that kind of price action. Draper believes that the US government’s massive stimulus package will …