Lightning: week after release

A week ago we announced that Lightning trades are available on Hodl Hodl’s MAINNET, and now we want to take stock of the week.

But, first of all, in case you’re not familiar:

What is Hodl Hodl

Hodl Hodl is a global P2P Bitcoin exchange, that allows users to trade directly with each other and it doesn’t hold user’s funds — locking it in multisig escrow instead.

The main difference between Hodl Hodl and other P2P Bitcoin exchanges is that we do not hold user’s funds and do not have KYC/AML procedures. Hodl Hodl is also cheaper than most of the other P2P exchanges, with a maximum fee of 0.6% per trade.

For both on-chain and Lightning trading

Hodl Hodl allows you to exchange bitcoins to fiat or other cryptocurrencies, both on-chain and on the Lightning Network. The trade workflow hasn’t changed much, the workflow is:

1. A contract is created between buyer and seller;
2. Seller deposits bitcoins from his Lightning wallet;
3. Buyer pays the seller according to the agreed upon payment method;
4. Seller releases bitcoins directly to the buyers Lightning wallet.

The only difference between on-chain and Lightning trades is that:

• In on-chain contracts we don’t hold the funds — they’re locked in the multisig escrow.
• In Lightning contracts, for the only the contract’s lifetime, we hold funds in our Lightning wallet.

So, now for an overview of Lightning for the past week.

Offers

• Number of offers

Compared to the first day after launch, the number of offers increased by the following amounts:

1. Buy offers increased from 10 to 26;
2. Sell offers increased from 8 to 25.

• Payment methods

Currently at Hodl Hodl, users are buying and selling bitcoins via Lightning Network using the following payment methods:

Alipay, Any national bank (Brazil, China, Nigeria, Romania, Thailand), Banesco, Beemit, CaixaBank, Ethereum, HalCash, In person (Ghana), Interac e-transfer, Litecoin, Monero, PayPal, QIWI, Raiffeisen Bank, Revolut, Ria Money Transfer, Sberbank, SEPA transfer, Swish, Tinkoff, WeChat Pay, Yandex Money.

• Currencies

You can now pay, and be paid, in the following currencies for Lightning contracts:

AUD, BRL, CAD, CNY, ETH, EUR, GHS, IRR, LTC, NGN, RON, RUB, SEK, THB, USD, VES, XMR.

Contracts

During this past week, 10 contracts have already been successfully completed via the Lightning Network.

• Faster

We compared on-chain contract completion time with Lightning contract’s and learned that on average, Lightning contracts are two times faster. We explain this by the lack of the payment passwords and the simplified trading model.

• Cheaper

Trading on the Lightning Network is also over two times cheaper, compared with on-chain contracts:

1. Current average transaction fee is about 0.00020535 BTC on-chain.
2. Current maximum transaction fee is 0.0001 BTC on Lightning Network.

Challenges

We are currently encountering real-time experiences, and would like to summarize two things:

1. Interruptions in Lightning contracts;

During this week, because of the maintenance, there were cases of minor interruptions during Lightning contracts, that did not affect the funds nor the main functionality of the contracts.

Now, all the issues are gone and Lightning contracts work as they should.

2. Release issues.

We’ve faced issues relating to releases, that were on our customers’ side, so we would like to clarify here and now, and for the future: for us to be able to transfer Lightning bitcoins to your wallet, you must have at least one public inbound channel open for an amount larger than what you are buying. Otherwise, due to the way Lightning Network operates, we would have no chance to release the funds.

To avoid further issues, we’ll add notifications and informational messages on the exchange, to inform our customers about any possible problems.

Further plans

We have already stabilized Lightning contracts, and from now on, we’ll expend significant resources to improve the infrastructure of the exchange, specifically, relating to Lightning.

Also, we’re one step away from introducing — Predictions by Hodl Hodl — our new project, which is already available on TESTNET.

Reach us

• Hodl Hodl exchange: hodlhodl.com
• TESTNET Hodl Hodl exchange: testnet.hodlhodl.com
• Predictions by Hodl Hodl: predictions-testnet.hodlhodl.com
• TESTNET Predictions by Hodl Hodl: predictions.cc
• E-mail: support@hodlhodl.com
• Blog: https://medium.com/@hodlhodl
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/hodlhodl
• Telegram: https://t.me/HodlHodl
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/hodlhodl
• Slack: https://goo.gl/zaMnCn
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hodlexchange
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgujEoZqX_FfDTLb3Uuhsdg

Hodl!