For three years LNP/BP Standards Association develops standards, protocols and reference implementations for application layers on top of Bitcoin and Lightning network, ensuring and promoting values of censorship resistance and privacy.
So far, we have developed and contributed to the development of the following technologies:
- RGB: scalable and confidential smart contracts for bitcoin and Lightning Network
- LNP Node: pure rust re-implementation of Lightning node, focusing on simple extensibility and able to run L3 applications
- Descriptor wallet library: a bitcoin wallet developer SDK supporting Taproot, miniscript, PSBTs, descriptors, RGB and lightning network
- Taproot implementation in rust-bitcoin; maintenance of rust-bitcoin library for three years (leading contributors)
- AluVM: pure functional virtual machine used in RGB smart contracts and for Lightning layer 3 applications
- Bifrost (WIP): extensions to lightning network supporting channel factories, taproot, channel composability, PTLCs, discrete log contract channels and independent L3 application development.
- Storm: layer 3 decentralized data storage and propagation network on top of Lightning (Torrent-like, but with embedded payments in sats).
Over the years the Association has build around 80 separate rust libraries, 3 nodes (RGB, LNP and Storm), created several dozens of standards (including BIP). The gross amount of code created by our developers has exceeded 1 million of rust lines. You can find more information about our development activities at our GitHub organization pages.
Our goals for the future development efforts in 2023 include:
- Better developer documentation and educational materials for RGB
- Completing integration of RGB smart contracts into Lightning Network
- Contractum: a programming language for RGB. Templates for main types of RGB smart contracts: fungible tokens, NFTs, decentralized identity.
- Further development of Lightning Network extensions (Bifrost), including support for channel factories, channel composability and use of Schnorr signatures/Taproot
- Building BiFi protocols on top of LN and RGB, including DEX, liquidity pools and AMM
This large-scale development effort was made possible due to the community financial support and, to the large extent, personal funds of Association developers. We thank to companies and funds who supported us financially before, including Bitfinex, Fulgur Ventures, Hojo Foundation, Pandora Prime, and personal contributions of Dr Maxim Orlovsky and other private individuals.
To continue our operations we have to fundraise at least 300k of USD equivalent for the next year (2022 Q3 - 2023 Q3). Depending on the actual results of the fundraising campaign, the funds will be used for the development goals as provided in the table:
| Goal | < 300k | 300 k | 300-500k |
Completing RGB / LN integration
| + | +
| + |
| Detailed RGB specification | +
| + | + |
| RGB NFTs and identity contract templates |
| + | + |
RGB toolchain & Contractum language
|
| + | + |
| RGB developer and user docs, education materials |
| + | + |
| Bifrost: LN channel factories, channel composability |
| + | + |
| DEX on Lightning |
| + | + |
Liquidity pools, AMM
|
|
| + |
| RGB developer conference in Milan in 2023 H2 |
|
| + |
If fundraising campaign will result in raising of more than 500k the remaining funds will be used for future years.
All developments will be made under permissive opensource licenses like MIT, Apache 2, CC0, BSD.