Blockstream releases Liquid Network bitcoin sidechain full node and wallet
Blockstream, the blockchain technology and financial cryptography infrastructure provider today has announced the availability of the Liquid full node binaries and source code. Now any user can join the P2P Liquid Network by operating a full node, in order to trustlessly self-validate the chain just like they can with the Bitcoin network.
Included in this release are the Liquid full node liquidd and liquid-cli command-line utilities, complete with wallet support which enables users to self-manage L-BTC and other Liquid Assets.
Last month, Blockstream launched the Liquid Network side chain, which facilities faster bitcoin transfers.
With liquid-cli, users are able to interact with the Liquid Network in the following ways:
- Issue Assets
- Send and receive Liquid Issued Assets
- Send and receive Liquid BTC (L-BTC)
- Display various information on the state of the Liquid chain
Users can also utilize the confidentiality features of Liquid not present in Bitcoin. The Confidential Transactions feature hides transaction amounts in order to provide privacy. Despite providing privacy, the math behind Confidential Transactions also allows the Liquid sidechain to be open and verifiable.
Confidential Assets is another privacy feature that masks the types of assets that are transacted in Liquid, meaning that only the sender and receiver of an Issued Asset know which asset is being transacted. As with Confidential Transactions, however, the math used supports public verifiability of transactions, without needing to know what asset is being transferred.
Those interested can give it a try by signing up to an exchange that offers Liquid service, and making an L-BTC withdrawal (only The Rock Trading is live at the time, but more exchanges are coming soon). Send L-BTC to friends that set up their own Liquid wallet, and use L-BTC to create and transact Issued Assets. For advanced users, if you use the peg-in RPC API, note that for security reasons peg-outs can only be made to Liquid exchange cold wallets, so you need to peg-out from your exchange account. Please be aware before you peg-in.
Liquid is built on and compatible with Blockstream’s Elements sidechain-capable blockchain platform. For more advanced users and developers interested in learning about the technology used in Liquid, or if are considering building with Elements, they can go through Blockstream’s comprehensive tutorial.
Further Liquid related releases from GreenAddress for GUI wallet support, and hardware wallet support for Liquid Assets from Trezor and Ledger, will be announced in the future.
