Stellar To Adopt The Lightning Network With A Launch Scheduled For 2018

The non-profit organization behind the Stellar cryptocurrency has plans to make a major step forward by adopting the Lightning network which was initially created to address the scalability issues revolving around Bitcoin.

The Stellar team revealed their plans to integrate their Stellar network with the Lightning network just a week after the Lightning team announced the launch of their beta for their network. This means Stellar is one of the first projects that have formally announced their plans to adopt the Lightning network.

There has been a lot of excitement and optimism around the Lightning network especially because it has been marketed as an ideal solution for solving the scalability issues that have plagued bitcoin. The Stellar team released a formal guideline on how it plans to integrate the Lightning network into its already existing platform.

McCaleb views the Lightning network as a vital component for driving growth within the Stellar platform in the future. He also pointed out that his company recently announced numerous partnership and that it also plans to announce others in the future. The partnerships highlight the company’s plans to explore the limits of Stellar. The Stellar founder also pointed out that Lightning is one of the ideal solutions that will be necessary towards maintaining the stability and efficiency of the Stellar Network.

Scaling up has been a big problem for cryptocurrencies especially the major ones. For example, the Ethereum network also had scaling problems at some point and for that reason, the Kik messaging app decided to leave the platform for Stellar which offered more scalability. It is therefore important for the Stellar team to make sure that their platform does not face scalability problems in the future.

Some of the micropayment services in the market such as SatoshiPay have expressed interest in scalability. IBM which is one of Stellar’s partners revealed that it plans to attract banks to use the Stellar network and this is another major reason why the platform needs to scale up. This is because being involved with banking would be a big opportunity and scaling up would allow it to take full advantage and be adequately prepared for the future.