🌊 #002: Feel the Breez
Everyone's going nodeless and we're stacking sats (and air miles).
Welcome to the second edition of Feel the Breez. We are back, baby!
We’re here to share everything we’ve been up to, where we have been, and what our community of Breezers can look forward to.
In this edition of Feel The Breez, we have updates on:
Why Everyone’s Going Nodeless
Breez Around the World in 6,129 Blocks
New Partners & Releases
Lightning in the Wild
Plus, learn Roy’s favorite analogy!
Let’s dive in 👇
Everyone’s Going Nodeless ⚡️
Imagine sending and receiving bitcoin over Lightning without needing a node, managing channels, or relying on an LSP. Sounds like a dream?
Well now, it’s a reality.
Say hello to Breez’s nodeless Lightning implementation, one of the simplest ways to integrate bitcoin payments into any app or service.
The first app to go nodeless was StashPay, a bitcoin wallet built by Tankred Hase for freelancers and digital nomads. "I built it for solopreneurs like me, tired of high fees and clunky invoicing systems," Tankred explains. When development hit a roadblock, the Breez SDK stepped in as the perfect solution.
With the Breez SDK, Tankred could focus solely on building his product, cutting costs and giving his users complete control over their bitcoin. No need for nodes, no KYC, no hassle — just effortless peer-to-peer bitcoin payments. Magic internet money.
You can catch Tankred on Stephan Livera’s podcast where he talks all about StashPay and why Breez SDK was the game-changer.
Ready to go nodeless? Head on over to our documentation to get started.
Breez Around the World in 6,129 Blocks ✈️
It’s been approximately 6,129 blocks since our last newsletter — and since then we’ve traveled across North America, Europe, and Asia. Our air miles are looking good.
Bitcoin Conference 2024 | 📍: USA
Breez CEO, Roy Sheinfeld, took to the stage twice over four days in the heart of country music. Sadly, the world was denied a musical performance from the Breez CEO — but they got something even better: two killer discussions. The first was Founders on a Lightning Standard, moderated by the awesome Frank Corva (check out his newsletter), alongside panelists Desiree Dickerson from THNDR and Evan Kaloudis from ZEUS. The second was The Path Forward for Lightning, featuring Aditya Sharma, Jesse Shrader, and niftynei.
Watch Out, Bitcoin! | 📍: Spain
Roy also joined the Watch Out, Bitcoin! conference in Madrid, where he was part of a panel discussing how Lightning has solved Bitcoin’s scalability issue. ¡Nos encanta Bitcoin! ¡Vamos!
Token 2049 | 📍: Singapore
Umi Miyahara, Breez’s BD Lead, began a Breez tour of Asia. The first leg of the tour stopped in Singapore, where she took to the stage at two events in the country: Lightning 2049 and Bitcoin Singapore — sharing with audiences why Lightning is the common language of the bitcoin economy. You catch her presentation at Bitcoin Singapore here.
BTC Tokyo 2024 : 📍: Japan
On her whirlwind tour of Asia, Umi’s next stop was Tokyo, where she participated in the inaugural BTC Tokyo 2024. She moderated discussions on sound money and business apps, plus she presented a talk on self-custodial Lightning and the Breez SDK.
New Partners, New Releases 🆕
Alongside StashPay, we’ve welcomed yet more partners to Lightning with the Breez SDK.
👋 Elysium Lab, a keyless crypto wallet, launched their app to the world (congrats!) with Lightning powered by the Breez SDK. Make sure to check out why Gianmarco Guazzo, the co-founder of Elysium Lab, believes the Breez SDK is the “best tool out there”.
👋 Diamond Hands announced their Diamond Wallet, the first functional self-custodial wallet from Japan that lets users earn sats for viewing ads. Yep, you heard that right — sats for viewing ads. Whatever will they think of next!
It’s not just our partners shipping products, the Breez team continues to keep building — most recently releasing a big update of our nodeless implementation with LNURL-Pay support and Go & C# bindings added.
For the latest SDK updates, you can find them here and here.
Extra, Extra, Read All About It! 🗞️
At Breez, we love talking about Lightning. A few weeks ago, Roy sat down with Macauley Peterson, Senior Editor at Blockworks, to explain why Lightning already won.
Here’s a snippet from their conversation:
Breez CEO Roy Sheinfeld’s favorite analogy looks to the Chinese abacus.
“You can think about the payment channel as a wire on an abacus with beads on both ends of the channel,” Sheinfeld told Blockworks. “The magic of Lighting is the fact that we can move beads from my end of the channel to your end of the channel…without publishing the transactions to the chain.”
Lightning maintains state between two counterparties trustlessly, and uses ordinary Bitcoin transactions, but settles only when the channel is closed.
“If you run a Lightning node, you trust yourself and you trust the chain, [but] you don't add other dependencies.”
In many ways, that’s the ultimate layer-2.
Lightning in the Wild 👀
2024 is the year of the Wood Dragon, known for bringing opportunities and exciting advancements — exactly what we’re witnessing within the Lightning ecosystem.
Here are a few of our favorite recent Lightning demos:
⚡️ Relai: The Relai team showcased this video of drinks being purchased using their Lightning-powered wallet. Plus, SwissHodler demonstrated how simple it really is to send bitcoin over Lightning — sending sats between Relai and Wallet of Satoshi. Magic.
⚡️ Diamond Wallet: Fresh off the announcement of their new self-custodial wallet, Diamond Hands shared a demo showing how you can now effortlessly earn sats by viewing ads. Getting paid to watch ads? Epic.
⚡️ StashPay: Lastly, check out Umi’s StashPay nodeless Lightning wallet demo. It’s as smooth as butter.
Honestly, we can’t wait to see what people come up with next.
Friends, sadly, the second edition of Feel the Breez must draw to a close.
So remember, the best time to get into Lightning is now — always has been.
See y’all next time!