Wallet developer Zap has launched a new service that makes it easier to start using the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The new service, called Olympus, lets users load up their wallets with fiat money and instantly start making Lightning payments in crypto, announced founder Jack Mallers in a blog post yesterday.
The Bitcoin Lightning Network has always been a tricky and a long-winded process to set up. This may be one of the reasons why adoption of the network—designed to make instant Bitcoin payments—has been slowing down over the last year.
Previously, wrote Mallers, users would have to undergo a lengthy process, “Take fiat, buy bitcoin, wait until you’re allowed to withdraw, withdraw and wait for confirmations, deposit bitcoin onto the Lightning Network, open channels, wait for more confirmations, scan QR code.” It’s a faff; we even tried it ourselves and struggled to even make a single payment.
With Olympus, wrote Mallers, all you have to do is, “Download, buy, scan.” You can buy your bitcoins in the app, and deposit them straight into your Lightning wallet after each purchase.
To make this happen, Olympus uses Turbo Channels to settle transactions, with means that the transaction doesn’t need to be immediately validated on-chain. These avoid the need to wait for a Bitcoin transaction to be confirmed—which takes over an hour—before payments can be made.
Olympus will be available inside all Zap wallets: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux. But it’s also a standalone component; meaning you don’t need a Zap wallet to use it. Is this the turbo Lightning adoption has been looking for?