It’s been a big few months for bitcoin, and with increased media attention and monetary valuation comes enhanced scrutiny of the technology underlying the world’s first peer-to-peer digital currency. For years, an intense debate surrounding the perceived trade-offs between bitcoin’s daily usability as a medium of exchange and its core value proposition as a censorship-resistant currency has ravaged the development community.
Simply put, many believed that the properties that made bitcoin a great decentralizing tool also rendered bitcoin an expensive and slow medium of exchange. Yet some exciting new developments with an above-chain project called the “Lightning network” could put many of those old fears to rest. If successful, the Lightning network (or a Lightning-like solution) could help bitcoin to more closely resemble the gold-backed banknote systems of the “free banking” era. Andrea O’Sullivan explains more.
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