The development of a key bitcoin scaling solution has been fragmented to date – but that could soon change. Major developers behind the Bitcoin Lightning Network met last week in Milan to determine how work on the micropayment layer will advance and how the varied efforts in progress will be standardized. In total, representatives from six projects attended, with those involved calling it a "culmination" of efforts that have taken place since the technology was first proposed in 2015 . According to organizers, the idea behind the meeting was to design rules for every implementation to follow so that the currently fragmented projects (of which there are at least eight following their own designs) can ultimately be made interoperable. Prior to the meeting, Lightning Labs co-founder Elizabeth Stark said the loose group had largely synched up over a series of bi-weekly phone calls and over technical discussion on the Lightning Network mailing list . Stark told CoinDesk: "Without proper in-depth conversations there might be incompatibilities and different ideas. We want all implementations to talk to each other and to work with each other." Other participants provided details on how information would be shared as work progresses, with some suggesting early versions of Lightning could be ready for use by the year’s end. For example, Blockstream core tech engineer Christian Decker indicated he feels confident development can now continue toward its goals as a result of the meeting. "We managed to nail down all the details needed to interoperate. This concludes the initial exploratory phase and we can now move forward combining all the lessons learned," he said. The highly-anticipated top layer for the bitcoin network is designed to boost transaction capacity and speed (hence “lightning”) in a way that developers say follows bitcoin’s original value proposition (a digital currency […]
