The cryptocurrency development arm of payments firm Square, Square Crypto, has issued a grant to the Eye of Satoshi, a Lightning Network watchtower that monitors blockchain transactions to protect users on the layer-two scaling solution.
Grant #6 goes to Talaia (pronounced “Talaia.”) Based in Spain and developed by @sr_gi, Talaia is building a FOSS Lightning Network watchtower called The Eye of Satoshi. It monitors blockchain transactions to protect you from peers closing the channel and taking your coins.
— Square Crypto (@sqcrypto) June 1, 2020
Per Square Crypto, is a users’ Lightning Network software is disconnected from the internet and isn’t actively monitoring the Bitcoin blockchain, a third party is needed to watch it for them. Users who only use a light wallet, for example, need watchtowers’ services to ensure another party won’t steal their funds.
The firm added the Lightning Network watchtower it’s funding – Talaia – has other advantages, including improving censorship resistance by making attacks harder on the network. Square Crypto added that while there are “some trade-offs to be made,” they believe experimenting with multiple Lightning Network watchtowers could be beneficial for now.
Talaia also improves censorship resistance by making certain attacks harder. There are some trade-offs to be made, but since we’re still early, we think the LN benefits from experimenting with multiple watchtowers. The more 🧠s in the space, the sooner Lightning is ubiquitous.
— Square Crypto (@sqcrypto) June 1, 2020
Talaia is currently working with C-Lightning, but will integrate with several other Lightning Network implementations in the future. Square Crypto, as CryptoGlobe reported, has been funding Bitcoin and Lightning Network developers for some time now.
One of its latest grants was given to pseudonymous BTC developer ZmnSCPxj, who is working on the cryptocurrency’s layer-two scaling solution. Other grants were given to Bitcoin Core contributor Jon Atack and Bitcoin developer Tankred Hase. Square is owned by Jack Dorsey, who’s also the CEO of the microblogging platform Twitter.
The firm started letting users buy and sell bitcoin on its Cash app back in 2018 and has since been seeing its bitcoin-related revenue grow steadily. In the first quarter of this year, its bitcoin revenue surpassed that of fiat currencies, although profit from fiat currency was higher.
Featured image by Damian Kamp on Unsplash.
