The bear seems to have gone berserk in the crypto space as the markets have been moving sideways without a bull run since quite a while. Altcoins like Ethereum [ETH], Litecoin [LTC], XRP, and Stellar Lumens [XLM] have faced the same fate and are hoping for a Hail Mary.

 

Interstellar, the result of a merger between Chain and Lightyear, announces the preview launch of Starlight, that implements bidirectional payments channel for transactions on Stellar. Transactions on the payment channel are relatively private, secure and happen in an instant.

The normal transactions on the blockchain usually take time for the blocks to reach a consensus, which then allows the payments to proceed further by publishing the data of transactions to all observers while paying a small fee. This method of payment is obviously not private as it discloses the information of the transaction and is also time-consuming.

 

A payment network, on the other hand, would have a separate pathway set up between transacting parties, thus making the transaction happen in an instant, as they do not need the blocks to reach a consensus. These transactions, however, would not be published on the blockchain. When the channel is closed, the network takes into account the history of payments and shares the balance to their respective accounts and only the final balance is then added to the blockchain.

Interstellar is essentially taking a good thing and making it better as it has plans to extend the starlight project to Stellar’s built-in multi-hop payments across the newly developed payment channels. Starlight also has plans for making their payment channels compatible with other payments networks, such as Interledger.

 

Protocol Architect, Daniel Robinson said,

“Starlight payment channels are analogous to the Bitcoin payment channels used in the Lightning Network.”

For now, the review release only supports bilateral channels, i.e., channels with exactly two individuals and has an in-built wallet and a Starlight payment software as well. Starlight, for now, is released on the testnet until all the bugs are worked out.

 

Robinson further talked about the Starlight, saying,

“It allows transacting in lumens only (the native asset of the Stellar network). Future versions will support any asset issued on the Stellar network.”

A Twitterati @georgewnaylor quoted the use-case of the Starlight project saying:

“Privacy, and multi-chain interoperability, to name two. Laying the groundwork for CBDC/bank issuance on the network.”

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