Bitcoin Community Celebrates as Twitter CEO Joins Lightning Network Relay

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has joined a community project demonstrating the functionality of Bitcoin’s (BTC) second-layer scaling protocol, the Lightning Network (LN), on Feb. 5.

Dorsey, who has repeatedly pledged his faith in Bitcoin becoming the de facto currency of the internet, is now participating in an experiment dubbed LN Trust Chain, a chain of transactions on the LN that began circulating Jan. 19.

Based on the concept of the Olympic flame, the “Lightning Torch”  is a series of transactions between users of the Lightning Network, with participants communicating on Twitter with the hashtag #LNtrustchain. Each user receives the transaction, adds a nominal amount of 10,000 satoshis (about $0.34) and passes it to someone else they trust.

The torch currently contains just under 3 million satoshis (about $98.60).

Dorsey — who is also the founder and CEO of  mobile payments company Square — was nominated as a participat by entrepreneur and regular Bitcoin commentator Matt Odell in a tweet Feb. 4.

Having posted his invoice to Odell — currently the standard method of participating in the Trust Chain — publicly on Twitter, Dorsey received considerable praise from other well-known community sources.

“This will become one of the most historic tweets by @jack [Jack Dorsey],” a Bitcoin proponent known on Twitter as Armin Van Bitcoin responded, adding:

“And so, we begin the era of #BitcoinTwitter #BT[.]”

The LN Trust Chain experiment came about as a method of both spreading awareness of the LN and testing its robustness. Since its debut on the Bitcoin mainnet a year ago, developers continue to focus on technical prowess, ensuring the LN is ready for a potential future influx of users.

Last month, the LN passed a milestone capacity of $2 million and currently has an all-time high capacity of 646 BTC (about $2.2 million).

In a separate tweet Feb. 5, Dorsey revealed that the only cryptocurrency he holds currently is Bitcoin.  

In a recent interview, Dorsey declared that he believes Bitcoin will be the internet’s native currency, a claim he has made before.