Bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain has released Thunder protocol claimed to be the first realisation of bitcoin Lightning Network. If fully implemented, it is said to allow 100,000 transactions per second.

Thunder is an alternative network of nodes capable of instant processing of transactions off the main bitcoin blockchain. All registered transaction data is later recorded in the blockchain in bulk.

Using the Lighting Network method can make operations with cryptocurrency simpler, faster and cheaper, speeding up transactions to mere seconds and taking the load off the main network. Currently, sending a payment through the bitcoin system would make you wait 10 to 20 minutes for the confirmation, and even longer at peak time when the network may get clogged.

So far the Thunder protocol is released in alpha-version which is most suitable for facilitating transactions on trusted networks, but in the future the developers promise it to become a full-blown bitcoin Lighting Network. For the full implementation of Thunder wide adoption of the scaling features of Segregated Witness and the CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY opcode by the bitcoin community is required.

Thunder is an open source project and therefore can be adapted for any cryptocurrency beyond bitcoin. It runs on smart contracts so that every node in the network does not need to register all other transactions. 

Among the advantages of the new protocol its creators mention the following:

• Settlement to the bitcoin blockchain
• Scale: According to our tests so far, we can achieve better-than-Visa scale (100,000 TPS) with only a few thousand nodes on the network
• Extremely cheap payments: fees will develop naturally, due to the free market in an open and permissionless network and will fundamentally be lower than on-chain payments
• Encryption and Authentication: All communications between all nodes and wallets are encrypted using AES-CTR and take place only after completing authentication.
• Relaying Payments: TN will relay payments over multiple nodes in the network automatically, using encrypted routing. No one knows who made a payment, allowing for more privacy
• Settle payments automatically, no manual intervention needed. The settlement will ripple back through the network to provide proof-of-payment
• Instant Payments that are irrevocable the moment you see them

“Thunder is already open-sourced. It’s more functional today [than other versions of lightning networks], because it’s the first network of this style that’s settled back to the main blockchain,” Blockchain CEO Peter Smith told CoinDesk.

As the company’s press release notes, the development of the new protocol became possible due to participation of Mats Jerratsch, an innovative engineer hired by Blockchain last year to start working on the realisation of the Lighting Network concept elaborated in theory by smart contract developers Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja.

Elena Platonova