The following is a guest post and opinion from Bobby Shell, Board of Directors & VP of Marketing at Voltage.

AI is no longer just assisting humans—it’s making decisions, managing resources, and even spending money. But without instant, programmable payment rails, this new digital workforce is running on outdated infrastructure. Today’s AI systems are evolving into autonomous agents capable of handling complex workflows independently. These agents plan, interpret, decide, and execute operations, and increasingly are being trusted and empowered to make financial decisions too.

But for these AI systems to truly scale and thrive, they need access to digital money that is immediate, scalable, and secure: Bitcoin.

Here is why the correct infrastructure stack matters, how it is already taking shape, and why market leaders should act now to position their organizations for the future of money.

Legacy Networks Are Building. Is It Scalable?

Today’s financial infrastructure is built on closed systems: centralized platforms like Visa and Mastercard dominate payment processing, gatekeeping access to their tools and protocols. While Visa experiments with AI-powered payment orchestration and Mastercard develops dynamic transaction frameworks, these solutions are designed for incumbents, not innovators.

They’re siloed, slow to adapt, and exclude those who rely on decentralized assets like Bitcoin. These systems will never serve the edges of innovation—where creators, startups, and AI-native businesses are building the future—or those who measure value in Bitcoin’s sound money.

This is where open rails emerge as the disruptive alternative.

There are a few steps to an AI-ready payment stack:

• It begins with stablecoins, the predictable, permissionless currency for digital work, enabling global teams and AI agents to transact seamlessly, whether splitting revenue between algorithms or paying content creators across borders.
• Next comes Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, the backbone of this stack. Lightning operates beyond the constraints of Visa/Mastercard, offering instant settlements at near-zero cost. When an AI agent negotiates a contract or an autonomous drone orders replacement parts, it shouldn’t need a human to approve a transaction.
• Finally, open rails enable machines to pay machines: stablecoins become the “salary” for algorithmic work, while Lightning acts as the frictionless payroll system. This is not merely a technical upgrade—it’s the liberation of automation from human bottlenecking.

This stack redefines AI commerce: machines transact autonomously, humans collaborate seamlessly, and value flows instantly at scale—no banks, no friction.

AI Agents Are Becoming Financial Actors

Today’s AI models are capable of far more than just a year ago, with a growing prevalence in the workplace. They can execute project management tasks, file accounting records, order supplies, and even deploy code. These systems don’t just instruct; they can autonomously act.

Modern platforms like OpenAI’s GPT and LangChain frameworks make it possible to construct “agent loops” or workflows where the AI system autonomously interacts with external tools, APIs, and services. These agents often call external services, requiring payment for each action. For example, an AI writing assistant might fetch grammar checks from a third-party service, or a travel-planning bot might book a rental car.

AI operations demand automated, precise, and instant payments—yet traditional billing falters, plagued by manual delays, fee-heavy per-use models, upfront commitments, and non-programmable fiat rails reliant on intermediaries.

Stablecoins Are the Currency of Digital Work

In 2024, stablecoin volume exceeded $27.6 trillion, rivaling or surpassing major credit card networks.

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Stablecoins bypass cryptocurrency’s volatility, settle transactions instantly without delays, and enable seamless programmatic issuance, spending, and auditing—eliminating the need for manual reconciliation.

When AI is given access to capital, especially in the form of per-use, permissioned payments, it finds the best solution at the lowest cost in the shortest amount of time. This pay-per-action model reduces overhead and minimizes waste, giving open system AI agents a competitive advantage.
The result? Faster decisions, transparent spending, and measurable outcomes—exactly what businesses want from any operational layer.

Bitcoin: The Foundation Layer

Most stablecoins today run on platforms like Ethereum and Solana. But Bitcoin is still the most secure and widely trusted blockchain, and the Lightning Network is fulfilling its original promise as the “payments scaling layer.”

And what’s exciting is that there are already emerging use cases where AI agents utilize the Bitcoin Lightning Network for payments, primarily driven by the integration of AI with the Lightning Network’s L402 protocol and tools like LangChain, as pioneered by Lightning Labs.

Using the L402 protocol, an AI agent could query a specialized AI for market analysis data, paying a small fee in satoshis or stablecoins via Lightning. The L402 protocol authenticates and meters these payments, ensuring secure, instant transactions.

It can even be used to help with spam—a problem folks have been trying to solve since Adam Back’s Hashcash in 1997. A server hosting an AI model could theoretically issue an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response, prompting the requesting AI to pay via Lightning to proceed.

These use cases are still nascent but show immense potential as AI and Bitcoin converge.
While Visa and Mastercard are building AI-powered payment networks, they remain closed, permissioned systems. By contrast, Lightning is live, open, and proven—used by some of the biggest names in the industry.

Obstacles to Overcome

The Lightning Network’s liquidity model, which requires pre-funding, could pose potential challenges to its adoption as the primary rails for AI-driven payments, particularly in high-volume, autonomous systems. If Lightning channels lack sufficient liquidity, payments exceeding a channel’s balance could fail or require complex routing through multiple nodes. Even small liquidity gaps could force payments to take convoluted routes across multiple nodes, increasing fees and latency.

For an AI agent to send payments autonomously, it must pre-fund Lightning channels with sufficient liquidity. This requires upfront capital (in BTC or stablecoins) and technical expertise to manage channels—a barrier for small-scale AI projects or those without dedicated DevOps teams. Without easy on-ramps or liquidity pools, adoption could stagnate.

This type of obstacle highlights the demand for companies to offer services that fill these gaps to ensure a smooth experience. Fortunately, the industry is full of passionate builders dead set on this very thing.

The Future Is Permissionless and Programmable

In the end, the rise of AI agents demands a new kind of financial infrastructure—one that is open, scalable, secure, and permissionless. In the AI-powered economy, speed, trust, and programmability will separate winners from laggards. Those who build on open, instant payment rails today won’t just participate in the future of money—they’ll define it.

Mentioned in this article

I created a channel with core lightning with Push_msats parameter and quickly pushed a lot of funds into the peer side of the channel.

lightning-cli fundchannel  push_msats=30480

I did that to improve my ability to receive funds. I was able to receive more funds up to the channel capacity. But this was a big mistake. why? Now, this channel has far more funds than capacity, and when you close the channel, what is the channel capacity? Are the funds you pushed to the peerside with push_masters forever gone?

The peer effectively “stolen”:-(

If you made a payment instead, you would have received at least some products/services in return for that payment. Now, the pushed Saturday will disappear forever.

The channel has been closed.

Can someone help me understand if there is a way to get those Saturdays back from the peers?

I was reading about Bluetooth Low Energy, which led to the idea of running Lightning nodes completely offline. From there, I began to wonder:

• Are there any existing proposals or positive discussions regarding the air-gapped Lightning Network?
• What technical challenges did people identify when making lightning work with BLE/Wi ‑ Fi mesh?
• Can someone point out that I study or contribute to papers and implementation experiments related to me?

PS: I’m not used to Lightning Network at all, so I might have overlooked aspects that contradict the idea of an air-gapped setup. If so, apologise!

July 25th How can BitVMX Observers help you improve your Lightning network?

Watchtowers is a specialized Bitcoin Lightning Network service that protects users from fraud by monitoring blockchains and intervening when outdated channel conditions are broadcast maliciously. Their importance lies in protecting users who may not be able to respond to offline or conflicts in real time, a key vulnerability in Lightning’s off-chain payment model. However, traditional watchtower designs often rely on centralized, reliable parties that raise censorship and privacy concerns. BITVMX introduces a new solution to this problem by allowing the eye to function as a programmable and verifiable agent. Their actions can be implemented through proof of fraud, greatly reducing the trust required by a single operator. Unlike previous models, BitVMX monitoring is transparent, auditable, resistant to fraud, and addresses Oracle issues in a narrowly defined and enforceable way. This innovation could enhance the security and decentralization of the Lightning network, and is important to make it viable for popular mobile-first adoption.

What are wardens and why are they important?

Watchtowers is a specialized service from Bitcoin Lightning Network designed to monitor blockchains on behalf of users and take action if counterparties broadcast an outdated channel state and attempt to cheate. Because Lightning networks rely on off-chain payment channels, both parties must maintain an accurate and up-to-date view of shared channel balance. In the event of a dispute, the correct state will be carried out by publishing the latest commitment transaction on-chain. However, if one party is offline or unavailable, there is a risk of losing funds if the other party broadcasts an old favor. The watcher acts as an outsourced guardian, constantly scanning the blockchain and broadcasting penalty transactions if it detects fraud.

The need for monitoring arises from the security trade-offs inherent in Lightning’s design. Users gain speed and privacy by resolving transactions from the chain, but they must stay online intermittently to protect against channel violations. This requirement is unrealistic for most users, especially those using mobile or intermittently connected devices. The surveillance allows users to delegate this responsibility while maintaining security assurances. Over the past few years, implementations of several surveillance devices such as LND, C-Lightning, and Electrum have shown that this concept is technically viable. However, most current customers are centralized or operated by trusted third parties, raising concerns about censorship, availability and dependence on specific providers.

Promoting distributed oversighters presents a complex set of challenges. To be effective without creating trust dependencies, you need to be encouraged to act honestly with unsightly people, but at the same time you can’t learn private user information. This is complicated by the so-called “Oracle problems” of blockchain systems. If a smart contract or off-chain system requires actual data (or in this case off-chain monitoring), it must trust and report it correctly with external entities. Observers are a type of Oracle, although they play a narrow role and report on on-chain activity related to a particular lightning channel. The challenge is to design a system that users can trust that watchtowers respond correctly to fraud without trusting or releasing sensitive information in the general sense.

Without an effective watch tower infrastructure, users are subject to potentially irreversible losses during offline periods, particularly in low-liquid or hostile environments. As Lightning Network aims for wider adoption, especially among mobile users and merchants that are not constantly present online, watchers become an essential layer for ease of use and trust. Their role is to be defensive as well as abstract complex vigilance requirements and allow lightning bolts to be accessible to less technicians. Building a watch tower system that awards decentralized, incentive-compatible privacy is a key goal for Lightning’s long-term scalability and resilience, and its success could determine whether the network can mature into a truly global and always available layer for Bitcoin payments.

What does BitVMX bring to the table from an observer’s perspective?

BITVMX is an advanced framework built on the rootstock (RSK) Sidechain for Bitcoin, focusing on enabling generic off-chain calculations on Bitcoin that can be performed on-chain using interactive fraud proofs. Based on the principles of the original BITVM concept, BITVMX allows participants to run complex programs off-chain off-chain and commit to the results in a way that can be verified and contested on the Bitcoin blockchain if necessary. This is achieved through a challenge response protocol that can prove and penalize malfunctions using standard Bitcoin scripts without requiring any changes to Bitcoin consensus rules. Combining expressive programmerism with Bitcoin’s robust security model, BitVMX opens the door to reliable minimization applications such as scalable rollups, verifiable dispers and advanced smart contracts. For more information about BITVMX, see our previous post.

BITVMX introduces a new paradigm by enabling the execution of off-chain programs that can be implemented in a chain through fraud proofs. In the lightning context, this not only makes the eye-opener more flexible, but also provides a way to validate and correct the behavior. Instead of relying on a single trusted party to detect and respond to fraud, participants can encode the conditions that the watcher must follow and challenge them if they deviate. This innovation could translate watchtowers into programmable agents that can be audited and carried out without compromising user privacy or decentralization, potentially solving long-standing Lightning Security problems.

From a broader perspective, the watchman acts as a narrow type of blockchain oracle. They observe transactions, especially at the Bitcoin base layer, and especially external events, and respond when conditions are met. This is similar to the “Oracle problem,” which focuses on providing reliable, verifiable information to the blockchain environment from outside the chain. BITVMX mitigates this by turning watchers into verifiable computing agents that are subject to dispute resolution via fraud proofs. This significantly reduces the trust required of a single watchtower operator while maintaining the privacy and efficiency benefits required for actual use.

Lightning Network users remain exposed to potential fund losses, especially when offline, as there is nothing to enhance through enforcement mechanisms like BitVMX. This makes Lightning’s appeal to casual or mobile-first users exactly the demographics needed for mass adoption. By enabling programmatic, distributed and challenging watchtower logic, BitVMX represents a critical step into a safer and user-friendly Lightning network, if adopted. It provides a path to scale Bitcoin payments without compromising trust assumptions or decentralization, reinforces Lightning’s goal of becoming a truly global and authorized payment system.

How does BitVMX’s approach to Watchtowers differ from past attempts?

The concept of a watchman has been around for a long time, but its practical implementation faces problems with trust, centralization and limited incentives. The need for distributed and verifiable alternatives remains one of the key open challenges of the Lightning network.

BITVMX offers a new approach to solving this problem by enabling expressive off-chain calculations that can be performed on-chain through fraud proofs. When applied to an observer, this means that logics such as detecting cancelled transactions and acting on them can be written as verifiable programs. Unlike traditional observers, where users must trust in order to behave correctly, BitVMX-based observers are bound by predefined logic that participants can audit and challenge on-chain if fraud is suspected. This is not just a reputation, but creates a trusted modern architecture where the watcher operates under encryption scrutiny. As a result, a security model compatible with distributed deployments and unauthorized participation is much stronger.

When comparing BITVMX with traditional tower models, the key differences lie in verifiability and enforcement. Legacy Watchers typically run as a standalone service that monitors members and blockchains and acts as needed, but users must trust them to do so honestly and promptly. We also disclose privacy risks as we require detailed knowledge of specific channels to perform our duties. Some suggestions aim to introduce encrypted data blobs or monetary incentives, but these remain incomplete and often require trade-offs between reliability, cost, and decentralization. BITVMX avoids these issues by embedding operational rules into a coercive framework that challenges misbehaviors and can be punished, and by eliminating the need for trust while maintaining user privacy.

As Lightning’s adoption grows, robust offline security becomes essential for mainstream users who run full nodes or do not maintain a certain level of connectivity. Guardians, especially those empowered by BitVMX’s programmable fraud prevention model, can play this role because there are far fewer compromises. They not only passively protect users, but do so in a way that is consistent with Bitcoin’s commitment to resistance to censorship and minimal trust. In this light, BitVMX-powered watchdogs represent key enablers for scaling lightning into a wider audience, transforming experimental features into the fundamental pillars of Bitcoin’s fast, secure, decentralized payment infrastructure.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/how-can-bitvmx-observers-help-you-improve-your-lightning-network/feed/ 0 49748 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/do-lightning-and-liquids-use-the-same-address-and-network/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/do-lightning-and-liquids-use-the-same-address-and-network/#respond Sun, 20 Jul 2025 21:27:24 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/do-lightning-and-liquids-use-the-same-address-and-network/

I am using the BlockStream app on my Android smartphone. Previously, when it comes to lightning and liquids, we dealt with chain coins.

So when you click on receive in the blockstream app, you have the option from

• Bitcoin
• Bitcoin (lightning)
• Liquid Bitcoin

What is the difference between lightning and liquid here? Both will ask me for the amount I give and generate it invoice After entering the amount. But what do both strings look like?

lightning:LNBC1M1P59Z5MY***

Doesn’t it matter if I got liquid or lightning? As long as this wallet goes, are they both the same?

I previously tried an aqua wallet, and although the liquid address looked different, I also didn’t need a preconceived amount, or just an address.

Also, if I use BTC for retail purchases, how do I convert it to lightning? Blockstream doesn’t seem to provide anything swap option.

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Fifteen years after he first committed code to Bitcoin Core, Jeff Garzik still thinks the protocol will “outlast everything,” yet he no longer believes its flagship scaling project can keep pace with user demand. During a conversation with Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo, the Hemi founder dismissed the Lightning Network as a “red herring” and laid out a roadmap in which programmable Layer-2s, not payment channels, bring the next billion users to BTC.

Bitcoin Lightning Is A Dead End

“Lightning is a failure. Very few people are using it, and it kept BTC locked on a bad sidetrack,” Garzik said, adding that the network “was a way to pump Lightning instead of alternate working solutions like layer-twos.”
He pointed to hard numbers: “Look at the outcome. We have roughly 5,000 BTC on Lightning after seven years. Wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum alone is 25 × that. Capital has already voted.”

Garzik blames Lightning’s limited traction on what he calls Bitcoin’s “vetocracy”—a governance culture in which any one faction can veto consensus changes. That culture, he argues, has “o-ified” the base layer since the 2017 block-size stalemate: “Bitcoin development basically stopped after 2017. OP_CAT, covenants—perfectly safe opcodes—have been studied to death, but the politics won’t let them in. So builders left. They went where they could ship.”

According to the former Core maintainer, the flight is measurable. Public Lightning capacity hovers near 5,300 BTC, or roughly $500 million, while Wrapped BTC and related bridged tokens now exceed 130,000 BTC—over $14 billion in raw collateral. Node counts tell the same story: about 16,000 publicly visible Lightning nodes versus more than 600,000 addresses holding Wrapped BTC.

Garzik’s critique is philosophical as well as technical. He repeated a line that startled the live audience: “Bitcoin is a social network first and a monetary network second. Its value comes from people coordinating around it, not from any single line of code. But that same social layer can veto innovation, and that’s how we got stuck.”

Because the social consensus resists base-layer change, Garzik sees the future in sidechains like his own project, Hemi. The platform embeds a fully validating BTC node inside an Ethereum-compatible roll-up, secured by proof-of-proof mining and BitVM fraud proofs. Smart contracts can “read and act on Bitcoin Layer-1 without custodial bridges,” he said, calling the design “EVM trial-by-fire grafted onto Bitcoin super-finality.”

“All the things built in the past fifteen years—stablecoins, DeFi, identity—are coming to Bitcoin. The only question is whether Lightning zealots will stand in the way.”

Lightning proponents note that capacity figures exclude private channels and that routing revenues are beginning to attract professional operators. Yet even bullish research from Fidelity Digital Assets concedes that public capacity has plateaued between 4,400 BTC and 5,600 BTC since 2022, growing far more in dollar terms than in coins.

Garzik argues that stagnation is structural: “Lightning is great if you want to move a coffee-cup’s worth of Bitcoin at light speed. It’s useless if you want autonomous lending, derivatives, or billion-dollar settlement. For that you need programmable trust, and Lightning doesn’t have it.”

But Bitcoin Will Outlive Everything

Despite the criticism, Garzik underlined that BTC’s monetary role is secure. “Bitcoin will live alongside gold. It’s the trunk; everything else is the foliage,” he said. The inevitability thesis rests on network effects, regulatory clarity, and deep-pocketed holders such as sovereign wealth funds: “Every incentive in the system points back to Bitcoin. That won’t change.”

But inevitability, he warned, is not growth: “Bitcoin isn’t going away, but it isn’t upgrading either. If we want self-sovereignty for eight billion people, we have to extend programmability without compromising the asset the world already trusts. That means Layer-2s—and that means leaving Lightning in the rear-view mirror.”

Whether the broader ecosystem agrees may hinge on tangible metrics in the coming year: capital allocated to Lightning versus emerging BitVM roll-ups, node counts versus wrapped-BTC supply, and, ultimately, the fees users are willing to pay for each path. For now, Garzik’s message is blunt: Bitcoin’s future is assured, but Lightning is not.

At press time, BTC traded at $108,838.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

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Sati, the Bitcoin Payments app and Lightning Infrastructure Provider, today announced the launch of Lightning Integration with Vivsed, a Bitcoin wallet used by over 1.5 million people worldwide. Thanks to integration, Vecverse users can now send and receive SATs (the smallest sect of Bitcoin) instantly against the Lightning network without setting up, switching apps, or managing risks.

First designed in 2017, Lightning Network has become a major layer 2 of Bitcoin, with current BTC capacity of over $465 million. Sati is now leveraging this technology to bring its global favorite digital currency to the pockets of 3 billion users around the world thanks to its powerful API integration with WhatsApp.

“Bitcoin was not intended to be a Wall Street asset. It was built for peer-to-peer money and is borderless and accessible,” said Felipe Servin, founder and CEO of Sati. “Natively integrating lightning will revive that vision and enable Bitcoin to be used on a massive scale for billions of dollars.”

Thanks to the integration, all vsverse users now get lightning addresses instantly. This means they can take tips, pay invoices, and use Bitcoin for microtransactions. Sati hopes rightning’s USDT will be supported early in Qucting Wallet in July 2025
For users who access Sati via WhatsApp.

This integration positions Sati’s role as a Lightning Infrastructure provider, not just consumer apps. By leveraging API-based solutions, the company offers plug-and-playback-end services to wallets and platforms that seek to add Bitcoin payments without compromising security or UX.

The property launch follows the debut of Parasite Pool, a new mining pool focused on the democratization of Bitcoin mining, leveraging the technology stacks of Sati and Verbers. Parasite pools charge 0% more than lightning and pay quickly, making them ideal for small miners, especially those running ultra-low power hardware like Bitaxe.

With over 500 users join the parasite pool within weeks of firing and the average pool hashrate is 5 pH/s, parasite pools are steadily present in the home mining space. Thanks to Lightning’s integration, the Parasite Pool supports the smallest Lightning Payout (1 cent), the industry, lowering the entry barrier for those interested in mining.

Sati recently closed a $600,000 seed round backed by Bitcoin-centric investors, including Draper Associates, Bitcoinfi, Arcanum, BoostVC and Ricardo Salinas. The funds are being used to support global expansion into Bitcoin in emerging markets, integration of Stablecoin, growth of lightning infrastructure and broader access.

Sati will be holding a live product demonstration at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas from May 27th to 29th. For more information about Sati, please visit Sati.pro

About Sati
Sati is the Bitcoin Payments Infrastructure Provider. Launched in 2025 with Like investors as Draper Associates and Ricardo Salinas, Sati will quickly promote seamless Bitcoin payments in applications such as WhatsApp and fuel the next wave of adoption. For more information, please see sati.pro

Reverse reconciliation
VESVERSE is the on-chain platform of the Bitcoin economy. I’m thinking about discovering alchemy natively built in Bitcoin. Trusted by over 1.5 million users, Vivses launches a unified Bitcoin L1 and Layer 2 portfolio platform in addition to its developer infrastructure, powering seamless Bitcoin native apps.

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Disclaimer:This is a sponsored press release. Readers are encouraged to carry out their own due diligence before acting on the information presented in this article.

Steak’N Shake officially began paying for Bitcoin via the Lightning network following an announcement reported on May 9th. At the time, the fast food chain tinkered with plans to integrate BTC, creating excitement across the Bitcoin community. And today, it’s an option at the cash register, or better yet, the Bitcoin register.

As of today, customers can pay for meals in Bitcoin at Steak’n Shake locations across the US. This is a major step in mainstream Bitcoin adoption as the chain serves more than 100 million customers a year, offering the option to use lightning bolts in immediate, low-cost transactions.

The company announced news about X this morning, confirming that Lightning Network payments are officially supported in store.

Next, they revealed the scale of the implementation. This is not a small test or pilot program. It’s a complete deployment of their entire system.

Bitcoin’s two-tier solution, Lightning Network is designed for fast, scalable and low-cost payments, making it ideal for purchasing POS such as burgers and fries. Steak’n Shake customers can use a supported wallet to scan the Lightning QR code at checkout and complete the transaction in seconds. The system uses a back-end payment processor to process real-time conversions to USD, ensuring stability and ease of use for both customers and merchants.

Previous reports from Bitcoin Magazine recorded that even hints on this move are important, and now it’s official, it confirms Steak’N Shake as one of the first major fast food brands to fully adopt Bitcoin through Lightning. This is beyond the occasional “accepted here” sign. This is a practical and streamlined payment option that reflects Bitcoin’s commitment to integration.

With tools like the Lightning Network making payments faster and more accessible, Steak’N Shake is at the forefront of the shift towards practical, everyday BTC utilities.

This update could indicate a larger trend on the horizon. Steak’N Shake’s move could trigger a similar wave of integration as more brands are watching consumer behavior and making the Lightning network easier to use.