Bitfury — a full-service blockchain technology company — recently announced their launch of a suite of Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) tools targeting businesses, developers, and users. Created by their LN development team — Lightning Peach — the bundle of tools includes an open-source Bitcoin LN-compatible wallet, an e-commerce solution for merchants and payment processors, a public LN node, and a hardware terminal for merchants.

The release of the products from Lightning Peach is another major step forward for the growing LN, and several of the tools are excellent onboarding opportunities for merchants looking to leverage Bitcoin’s second layer P2P mesh network.

The Lightning Peach LN Products

Lightning Peach designed their LN products to enable businesses to enjoy a user-friendly experience throughout their interaction with the LN. The merchant and payment processor plugin uses the Peach web-based API and enables merchants and processors to receive LN payments.

The Peach e-commerce plugin also allows both users and merchants to set up LN channels for payments through the open-source LN wallet that the team built. The public Peach node aggregates payments into larger amounts from consumers before reaching the merchant wallets. Further, merchants can even access a hardware terminal, which handles cashless point-of-sale and vending payments by making them LN-compatible.

General users can choose the desktop wallet for Mac, Windows, and Linux or select the mobile wallet available for both Android and iOS. Similar to merchants, users can also tap into the Peach public node by connecting to the public lightning channel, enabling easier payment channel creation.

Finally, Lightning Peach provides documentation for developers on their open-source Peach node implementation, which is built in the Rust language.

Advances in the Lightning Network

The new line of LN products from Bitfury is another significant step for the young second layer technology, particularly for merchants. Wallet designs and features have come a long way since the first LN implementation early last year, granting much wider access to the technology.

The Peach LN wallet provides users with features such as recurring Lightning payments, invoice creation, low-cost micropayments, and a Lightning ID address book. Moreover, the experience is designed as a drop-in for merchants with a user-friendly interface, fully compatible as a PrestaShop plugin, and both Magneto and WooCommerce plugins on the horizon.

Similar drop-in solutions have already been built — like the c-Lightning WooCommerce plugin –, and expanding the options for users of the LN is vital for the growth of the network by broadening access to create nodes and increase the node count.

LN payments confer several advantages to merchants, including reduced transaction fees, instant payments, and simple interactions with the Bitcoin network. The future adoption of Bitcoin and the LN by merchants will rely heavily on developments like Bitfury’s new suite of products.