ACINQ, a Paris-based startup building an implementation of Lightning, a scalable instant payment network built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain has today announced the testing of the Lightning Network on Litecoin.
The company said that with the recent surge in SegWit signaling on Litecoin, there is a good chance that it will be activated very soon. With ACINQ’s eclair 0.2-alpha3 soon to be released, the team studied what was needed to make Lightning run on Litecoin.
ACINQ testing was successful and worked out the box aside from a few parameter changes. Further, it was indicated that it was a real possibility that the first Lightning payment carrying real value will be made with LTC.
What Does it Mean?
The test paves the way for a much-anticipated feature of Lightning: trustless instant atomic cross-chain swaps.
In this particular case, users will be able to exchange BTC for LTC instantly, without requiring trusted third parties, using “atomic” transactions (i.e. either person X gets his LTC and person Y gets his BTC, or nothing is transferred).
LTC Bullish
Ever since word of SegWit adoption began bubbling at the end of March, LTC/USD has shot from $4.00 to touch $16.00 resistance today. The pair has since retreated to $14.72 at the time of writing, still good for a 400% return give or take a few points since March 30th.
