A unique experiment designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Lightning Network second-level protocol, launched in January and is gaining momentum every day, involving an increasing number of representatives of the bitcoin community.

The global campaign #LightningTorch is coordinated through the social network Twitter and has reached participants from 39 countries on all six continents. It is organized on the principle of the Olympic torch relay – to the initial payment of 100,000 satoshi (0.001 BTC) each new participant adds another 10,000 satoshi, challenging the next user.

The last who joined the marathon was somewhat unexpectedly Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The Bitcoin developer Matt Odell passed the baton to him, after which the payment amount reached 0.02860000 BTC (slightly less than $ 100).

Yo @jack ,

Are you ready to carry the torch? Send me an invoice for 2860000 sats. #LNtrustchain #bitcoin https://t.co/7BmDBidKR6

– Matt Odell (@matt_odell) February 5, 2019

As Jack Dorsey later confirmed, he takes the Lightning torch, calling it a “cool experiment” with technology. He passed the baton to the head of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark.

Cool example of #BitcoinTwitter experimenting on the Lightning Network.

?
⚡️Torch received, now passing along to @starkness ! #LNtrustchain https://t.co/YVMAv62fCN

– jack (@jack) February 5, 2019

Received! #LNtrustchain

Who's next? ? pic.twitter.com/AkVKnDskwK

– elizabeth stark (@starkness) February 6, 2019

The campaign was launched by the user Hodlonaut, an ardent supporter of Bitcoin since 2013. According to him, he was curious how the community would react to such an initiative, which implies a considerable part of trust, and instead of slogans like “Don't Trust! Verify! ”Go to direct action.

That is why he published a tweet on January 19, in which he wrote that he sent 100,000 satoshi to a randomly selected user, hoping that he would support the initiative.

Some LN fun ..

– I send 100k sats with https://t.co/va7XSnFii0 to the first person.
– That person adds 10k sats and sends 110k to someone (Either from reply to a new tweet, or this thread)

.. and so on

How many sats before it breaks?

– hodlonaut?⚡? (@hodlonaut) January 19, 2019

However, as Hodlonaut says , the baton had to be restarted twice. In the first case, when the Lightning torch lit 250,000 Satoshi, the recipient accepted the money as a gift, forcing the sender to make a re-transfer at his own expense. In the second episode, the user @eduard_btc stated that he simply takes the money to himself, “because it is Bitcoin and no one can stop him from doing it”.

So I'm currently proudly holding the Lightning Torch.

I can’t stop it. This is bitcoin,

Lightning Network is #lNTrustChain #bitcoin #reckless

– Eduard ⚡️ (@eduard_btc) January 31, 2019

Despite such manifestations of human greed, in total, almost 150 people have already participated in the marathon, including such famous personalities as Andreas Antonopoulos.

Earlier, the BlockchainJournal team launched its own node in the Lightning Network.

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