Bitcoin Lightning Network Developer Updates New Node Software With Taproot

Lightning Labs launches new node and taproot (Unsplash)

JAKARTA – Bitcoin Lightning Network released the latest software, LND beta 0.15 (v0.15-beta), the developer launched it to empower developers to create solutions to usage problems by leveraging the capabilities of the Bitcoin network.

Lightning Labs, which is the developer of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, released a beta version of the Lightning Network Daemon (LND), a complete implementation of the node with the latest additions support for enhanced protocols including Taproot and Musig2.

LND is a software component that handles various aspects of the Lightning Network some of which are managing databases, creating payment invoices, and withdrawing payments. The latest software release is named LND 0.15 beta (v0.15-beta).

Quoted from News Bitcoin, Lightning Labs on its Twitter account mentions Lightning Labs has more than 50 contributors participating in the first release in 2022. They also add that:

“This release provides complete Taproot support for internal wallets, making it one of the most advanced Taproot wallets available to date. Furthermore, this release has support for the Musig2 API which is compliant with the latest BIP draft.”

The main purpose of MuSig2 is to enable the generation of aggregated public keys that can be used in Taproot output and introduces the ability to authorize transactions with Schnorr Signatures.

Unlike the previous version, this beta release also removes redundant data from the log bucket showing a 95% reduction in database size during the initial testing period. Although the update does not reclaim space for the existing state, future releases will include a migration feature that can restore old disk space.

They will continue to strive to make the Lightning Network more reliable, strong, and secure. Lightning Labs introduces greater control over pathfinding preferences from this software. This will help reduce transaction costs by identifying the lowest cost route.

For information, the Bitcoin network recorded the lowest power demand occurred on June 25, 2022 at 10.65 gigawatts (GW). As a result, the computing power for mining BTC blocks fell to 199,225 exahash per second (EH/s).

The sudden drop in Bitcoin power demand is directly related to the falling hash rate. This mining hash rate corresponds to the computational power required by a BTC miner to successfully mine a block.