Top 10 Developments of Bitcoin in 2022

Disclaimer: This article aims to convey more market information and does not constitute any investment advice. The article only represents the author's viewpoint and does not represent the official stance of MarsBit

Disclaimer: This article aims to convey more market information and does not constitute any investment advice. The article only represents the author's viewpoint and does not represent the official stance of MarsBit.

Editor: Remember to follow me

Source: MarsBit

Cory Klippsten, TomerStrolit, and Sam Callahan of SwanBitcoin stated that both the upgrade of Taro and the development of lightning networks have made stable progress in Bitcoin this year.

The price collapse and cryptocurrency collapse dominated the headlines in 2022, but this was a year of significant progress for Bitcoin. In 2022, we saw how Bitcoin, as a protocol, can achieve widespread innovation and meet any needs identified by developers and entrepreneurs without the need for any modifications to the protocol. We emphasized the following 10 important developments.

1. Another year of 100% uptime

The biggest achievement of Bitcoin this year is still Bitcoin itself. Bitcoin continues to operate perfectly, with a block appearing approximately every 10 minutes, and its coin issuance accurately follows the regulations outlined in the 2008 Nakamoto White Paper. There are no emergency restarts, no hard forks, no chain splitting, and no protocol level hackers or vulnerabilities. Faced with all the challenges of 2022, Bitcoin has once again achieved 100% uptime. Anyone in the world can use it. Billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin are being transferred on its blockchain every day.

Bitcoin achieved all of this without any fund support, without any direct employees, leaders, or venture capitalists. Therefore, relying on the reliability and predictability of Bitcoin, the continuous development can be continuously concentrated in another year, and we are confident that we can do the same in the foreseeable future.

It is worth noting that the remaining items on this list do not require any changes to the consensus rules of the base layer of Bitcoin.

2. Development of Lightning Networks

Although the underlying layer of Bitcoin remains stable as a rock, its most important extension protocol, the Lightning Network, experienced large-scale growth and development in 2022. Lightning networks allow for real-time and affordable payments outside the chain without waiting for blocks to confirm transactions. It is completely decentralized and unauthorized, improving the scalability of Bitcoin while still utilizing the security and settlement guarantees of the Bitcoin infrastructure. The publicly visible liquidity capacity of the network has increased from 1058 BTC to over 4771 BTC in 2022.

The number of lightning network channels has increased by+80%, from 37298 to 67339 channels.

The number of publicly visible lightning network nodes increased by+88%, from 8295 nodes to 15636 nodes (although the growth rate slowed down in the second half of the year).

Overall, the development of Lightning Network this year has been astonishing, driven by the launch of numerous wallets, better tools for users, and the emergence of more educational resources. Due to Bitcoin users' desire for peer-to-peer value exchange through lightning networks, real-time and affordable payments (usually less than 1 cent) will become common in 2022.

3. El Salvador - a path that no country has ever walked

In 2022, El Salvador experienced the greatest national brand reshaping in history under President Nayib Bukele's economic freedom and Bitcoin policies. Bukele appears on the cover of the year-end edition of Bitcoin magazine, which shows the president looking like a founding father of hyper bitcoin, the first promoter, and the leader who dares to embrace pure Bitcoin and the economic freedom it provides to the people.

In the column, Bukele calls on all Bitcoin players around the world to recognize that El Salvador's struggle with global elites is also their struggle. El Salvador's embrace of the Bitcoin currency demonstrates to everyone that despite the doubts of mainstream media, it fully understands what revolutionary currency is. When American regulatory agencies and political elites were deceived by people like SamBankman Fried, Bitcoin led to a prosperous era in El Salvador. The number of tourists has surged, GDP has continued to grow, and the country has continuously increased its satellites.

In October, El Salvador established the world's first "Bitcoin Embassy" in Lugano. This chamber of commerce will be led by Bitcoin miners and investors from El Salvador, becoming a Bitcoin diplomat and "Honorary Consul" Josue Lopez. In November, the Bitcoin Office was established within the office of the President of El Salvador. The establishment of this office is to meet the growing demand for access and information from investors around the world. The Bitcoin office has further established a template for El Salvador for more countries to replicate on the path of hyper bitcoin. El Salvador ended the year in the most Bitcoin format - President Bukele announced that El Salvador would start purchasing one Bitcoin per day.

4. Machankura - Using Bitcoin for sending and receiving text messages in Africa

This new service was coded by African developer KgothatsoNgako within a few weeks, and he noticed a problem - most Africans have basic phone calls but no reliable internet connection, so he created a solution. Machankura enables people in Africa to receive and spend Bitcoin through text messages without the need for an internet connection. In a report by Caribou, 94% of financial transactions in Africa are conducted through text messages, while only 6% of these transactions are conducted through mobile applications. This new service allows individuals across Africa to use Bitcoin for the first time on the technology they already possess. Projects like Machankura will help promote the application of Bitcoin in areas where digital sound currencies are most needed.

5. Taro - Assets on the Lightning Network

This year, Lightning Lab launched a protocol proposal for Bitcoin and Lightning Network, aimed at allowing for the casting, sending, and receiving of assets on the network. Taro utilizes Bitcoin's latest protocol upgrade, Taprot, to enable theoretically any type of asset to be issued on the Bitcoin blockchain, while still using Bitcoin's work to prove the immutable verification of consensus mechanisms. Taro can allow various assets, such as stable currency, stocks, and bonds, to be issued on the basis of the Bitcoin protocol, opening the door to more use cases and more functions on the network.

6. Impervious.ai - The first P2P lightning native browser

Impervious Technologies has launched the first web browser built on the second layer extension system of Bitcoin, the Lightning Network. It is a peer-to-peer web browser that provides a complete set of communication, data transmission, and lightning payment tools without any intermediaries. Its forms include secure peer-to-peer information transmission, P2P video calls, P2P workspaces, decentralized identity management, decentralized data storage, and direct monetization of users' data. All of these tools are fully encrypted, eliminating centralized intermediaries for collecting and selling user data. By leveraging the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and Lightning Networks, Impervious Technologies hinted at the future of the Internet for us.

7. FediMints - Collaborative Regulation

FediMint is a new method of storing Bitcoin, which helps safeguard each other's Bitcoin and protect privacy by forming a collaborative storage community. This form of custody takes advantage of the inherent fact that humans trust the closest and most trusted individuals. It uses the technology of the Alliance and (David) Chaumian Electronic Cash Mine to maintain the privacy among individuals in the group in an encrypted way, and also allows them to share the supervision of the whole group's Bitcoin. This storage solution provides the possibility of expanding the scale of Bitcoin, improving privacy, reducing on chain costs, and allowing more individuals to store their Bitcoin on their own around the world.

8. Value 4 Value - Embed payment functionality anywhere

Value 4 Value is a new way of publishing content, where after "customers" enjoy the content, creators once again gain value through the lightning network. More than 10000 content creators have implemented Value 4 Value on their podcasts, while solutions such as LightningAddresses and Bolt-12 Invoices are providing this possibility for all other types of content and are expected to continue to grow rapidly in 2023.

9. PlebnetLightning - a community tool that makes lightning networks more powerful

An informal Telegram group composed of ordinary people interested in running their own lightning nodes will soon have over 5800 members.

Participants not only provide mutual support in best practices, but also community members have developed and released many open-source applications, making it easy for anyone to access some of the most advanced features of the Lightning Network. SdLightningTerminal is a browser based interface used to manage channel liquidity on self hosted lightning nodes, perform seabed swapping through lightning loop services, classify channels, and integrate loopd, pool, and faradaydaemon. Balance of Satoshis makes it easy to balance channels and facilitate lightning trading of inflow and outflow liquidity through the issuance of balance channels. LNDg and LightningJet provide similar features, with more advanced monitoring nodes and maximum efficiency capabilities.

10. Mining without grid computing and BTC

Around the world, people live in very little, very expensive, or without electricity. Bitcoin mining is changing everything. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey shared an example of using excess water and electricity to secure the Bitcoin network while providing electricity to rural Kenya, while reducing the electricity bill for 2000 people (500 households) from approximately $10 per month to only $4.

This is far from an isolated example. In December, another $2 million financing led by StillmarkVC and Block was obtained to use Bitcoin mining to increase energy supply throughout Africa, while further allocating and ensuring the Bitcoin network.