This Tech Lets You Send Any Cryptocurrency to the Lightning Network

Lightning Labs developer Alex Bosworth was looking into atomic swaps, a technology that allows the native cryptocurrency of one blockchain to be traded with another with no middleman when it hit him that it could be used to swap lightning for old-style on-chain bitcoins.

Called "Submarine swaps," that technology is now being tested on the live lightning network.

Swapping lightning network payments for on-chain coins should be possible one day as well.

Far beyond that, Bosworth envisions a future when every bitcoin or cryptocurrency wallet someday supports the technology, and as such, it would be just as easy to send litecoin, dogecoin or any coin to a lightning address.

Jason Wong, an aviation software developer also interested in cryptocurrency, started playing with submarine swaps not long ago, starting by showing something priced on the lightning network can be bought using litecoin.

Place, made solely for lightning payments, with submarine swaps users could then potentially pay in whatever coin they want, be it on-chain bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and many more.

That's because in order to make an atomic swap, lightning needs to be enabled on both cryptocurrencies, and for right now, only a handful of cryptocurrencies have a functioning lightning network.

With submarine swaps, only one side of the trade needs lightning.

In a lecture describing his vision for the tech a couple months back, Bosworth went as far as to envision a "Utopian swap future" - highlighting a variety of swap types.

Beyond submarine swaps HTLCswaps could allow users to trade lightning payments trustlessly for data.