Accessing the Lightning Network will be a challenge for most Bitcoin users. This is especially true until convenient interfaces to market. ACINQ is paving the way to achieve exactly that, as their Eclair Lightning wallet is now available for Android devices. It is a big step forward for Bitcoin and the LN as a whole.
Even though the Lightning Network is still in the early stages, users want to experiment with this technology. Doing so is not all that easy, albeit things are slowly improving ACINQ has unveiled their Android Lightning wallet, which can be found in the Google Play Store. Eclair is designed to be convenient and user-friendly while offering all of the Lightning benefits.
ACINQ Brings us Closer to the Lightning Network
More specifically, the wallet is fast, offers low transaction fees, and brings LN to the masses. Whether or not this will help speed up Bitcoin in the future, remains to be seen. With this new ACINQ wallet, such transactions should be nearly instant. The native side-chain technology used by LN will be of great benefit to cryptocurrency users all over the world.
It is the first release of the Eclair wallet for the Bitcoin mainnet. While there may still be a few bugs, small transactions should not be problematic. ACINQ confirms this wallet supports both onchain and outbound Lightning payments. For now, there is no inbound lightning payment support just yet. That is, it is not mentioned in the developer notes, but that may be an oversight.
We can only hope to see more projects like this come to market. More specifically, making LN more accessible is direly needed at this stage. Although it will take months – if not years – to see this solution go mainstream, important progress is being made already. Thanks to companies such as ACINQ, we may reap the benefits of the Lightning network very soon.
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