Pierre Rochard, an independent Bitcoin (BTC) advisor for institutional investors, took to Twitter recently and claimed to have developed a Microsoft Excel plugin that enables users to make BTC payments from the spreadsheet program.

Software Supports Lightning Network

Rochard, who has experience working as a senior accountant and software engineer, said he had created a program called Neutrino – which is reportedly a software solution built on top of the Lightning Network (LN) protocol (a second layer payment solution aimed to make bitcoin and other crypto transactions faster and cheaper). 

As explained by Rochard, Neutrino lets users make payments using the LN while not requiring them to operate a full-node. According to the software developer, “users can make and receive LN payments with a few clicks” in Excel.

Notably, there are many different implementations of the Lightning Network protocol and the project Rochard referred to is called Lightning Network Daemon (LND) – which has so far released beta version 0.5.

Early Stages Of Development

As CryptoGlobe reported in August, Shitcoin.com CEO Andreas Brekken had said that his experience with using the LN revealed that it had many glitches and was “impractical even for highly technical users.” He criticized the LN software’s very high rate of transaction failure and said its codebase was filled with numerous bugs.

However, if and when the LN technology evolves and matures, then it could potentially solve bitcoin’s scalability problem – which has resulted in very slow transaction processing times and extended time periods during which BTC payments had very high transaction fees.

While Rochard seemed optimistic about Neutrino’s ongoing development, he did make it clear to his followers that currently the LN and his software program are still in their early stages of development.

Only For “Power Users”

Rochard also noted that the LN-enabled Excel extension was “not for everyone.” He explained that the program had been developed mainly for “power users”, meaning that it was designed specifically for highly experienced Excel users.

Soon after Rochard tweeted about Neutrino, his followers began asking him for more information about his program. The New York resident and founder of Bitcoin Advisory, a consulting firm for institutional clients looking to invest in digital assets, pointed out that almost all finance professionals use Microsoft’s Excel program to do their accounting work.

This is the reason why he felt it was important to have a LN-enabled solution for Excel as its users regularly send many payments. When questioned about Neutrino’s official release date, the software engineer said the program’s public release should be expected at the end of this month