The New Effort to Get Bitcoin's Lightning Network In Every Browser

Touted as a way to make the world's most valuable cryptocurrency a more effective payment method, bitcoin's lightning network has a rather large obstacle ahead - it's still challenging, even risky, to set up and use.

The work, which has been ongoing for several years, looks to make online payments easier, while giving users more choice by making a variety of payment methods available in web browsers using an API - and that includes the lightning network.

"All in all, we should be able to get bitcoin and lightning working with the without any major roadblocks," prominent lightning developer Christian Decker told other developers in an email in August.

Decker, an engineer at Blockstream, specifically joined the Web Payments Working Group to make sure bitcoin and lightning would not be missed.

Whenever a user enters their payment information, whether that's their credit card number and expiration date or their lightning information, the API saves that information to the browser for easy payment the next time.

For one, Decker said that a so-called "Payment method ID" must be assigned to bitcoin and lightning before it can be a functioning part of the API. "Currently only the basic-card identifier has been assigned, but we can apply for one eventually," he said.

According to him, lightning developers are taking a passive approach, watching developments within the Web Payments Working Group "Very closely" to ensure that lightning remains compatible.

Even though lightning is compatible, it's still up to the browsers and merchants to actually add lightning support.

One concern is that lightning is so new and experimental, users have been known to lose money when sending a payment across the network.

Bitcoin developer Sjors Provoost, who's been thinking about how lightning in a browser might look, raised this concern in a comment on the project's GitHub.