Blockstream, a developer of Bitcoin and blockchain solutions, has announced the release of version 0.7 of c-lightning, a Lightning Network implementation in C. The c-lightning implementation is a go-to code and specification for enterprise Lightning Network deployments on Bitcoin and is what powers Blockstream’s Lightning Charge HTTP Rest API.
The 0.7 release is the culmination of eight months of work since Blockstream’s last major release, by 50 contributors from all over the world and comprising 1,300 commits. Not only does this release include a number of performance enhancements and bug-fixes, but it comes with a number of new exciting features.
New Features
- Plugins – The flagship feature for the 0.7 release, plugins allow developers to extend Lightning with their own applications written in any language. Plugins further strengthen Blockstream’s commitment to becoming the most flexible, extensible, and customizable implementation of the Lightning Network specification. They enable the team to stay focused on the core functionality, while at the same time empowering users and developers to add their own functionality to integrate c-lightning into their environment.
- Routeboost – Routeboost is now implemented, allowing Blockstream to send and receive payments over non-public channels by adding their details to invoices. This is important for nodes that do not announce their channels, allowing them to keep them private.
- Improved funds management – Better control over which coins are used to fund channels and withdraw from the nodes helps avoid a number of pitfalls with unconfirmed transactions.
option_data_loss_protectis now enabled by default, enhancing both users own security against data-losses, as well as that of their peers.- Reproducible builds – With some setup, users can build your own Ubuntu binaries and check that they’re identical to the ones Blockstream provides for added convenience.
- Better documentation – Blockstream understands that the best features are of no use if they are not well documented. For this reason, the team revamped c-lightning documentation which is now automatically generated at lightning.readthedocs.io
“While certainly an important milestone for us, this release is but the start of more things to come. After recently finalizing the v1.0 of the Lightning Network specification, we are looking forward to many more exciting and innovative features on our roadmap. For one, we recently proposed a more flexible way of constructing the onion routing packet, allowing more information to be carried to hops in a route. This will enable powerful features such as spontaneous payments that don’t require invoices, and rendezvous routing that hides both the sender and the receiver identity during a payment. Other proposals we have been working on include dual-funded channels, for providing better liquidity to the network, and the removal of fee commitments, which solve one of the main causes for channel closures. With the 0.7 release of c-lightning we are excited to get started with implementing these amazing features and tackle some of the big challenges that lie ahead.”