Romain Rouphael | Connect the World

Possibilities to connect to web applications and other tools without the need of email or registration is very important and make the UX feel more seamless. Do you think it will remain possible to make Bitcoin and Lightning applications more user friendly despite future regulations?

It’s a tough question. Our focus with LN Markets has been to leverage the Lightning Network for instant trading. With Lightning, we can build new interactions with the market: instant account creation and instant transfers for instant trading! When you think about it, the ability to move money all around the world, instantly, at low-cost is just mind blowing and is bound to have implications in the world of finance.
Now will financial regulation adapt to this new paradigm or try to fight it? I think fight it in a first time, and if the technology is good enough, it will prevail.

The LN Markets node forwards two times more Bitcoin on the Lightning Network every year. Do you think we can use this exponential metric to measure the adoption of Lightning?

Yes, most node operators do not share this kind of metric but I think they’re pretty consistent with the rest of the network. We have almost not changed the settings of our node since 2020, so it can be used as a good proxy in my opinion.

Connecting to LN Markets can be done by using LNURL or any other wallets supporting LNURL-auth. This solution seems the most efficient and secure way.
Will logging in with a Lightning Wallet become a more common and mainstream solution in the future?

We clearly think it has a potential to become a new standard. When we launched LN Markets and people could try lnurl-auth in the wild for the first time, they were mind-blown. I remember Marty Bent coverning it in his newsletter when we just started. When people think about Web3 they often refer to the idea that people can self-manage their idendity with cryptography, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
I would prefer to use some kind of lnurl-auth login for all my online interactions.

Some developers think the Lightning Network will eventually become an infrastructure, which will create conditions for a multitude of use cases to arise. What is your thought on Lightning as an infrastructure?

You mean like having a decentralized web, browsers or social apps on top of Lightning? That’s some very interesting use cases and it’s good to see people building that. But in my view, as with Bitcoin the first real use cases to emerge will be money and finance related.

If the Lighting Network will eventually scale to a new infrastructural standard, do you think centralisation is inevitable?

I don’t think so. Bitcoin is widespread as a money infrastructure and is still decentralized. Lightning can become a new standard for instant transfers and still manage to retain decentralization in my opinion.

Seeing Lightning as a working capital asset and earning yield could also be very important for increasing adoption.Developments like Taro and RGB could be the next big breakthrough for the Lightning Network.
Do you think this will be indeed important to have more adoption in the near future?

Yes, definitely. RGB and Taro are very important projects. No matter what one thinks about the relevance of stablecoins or tokens, the fact is that they’re used and popular. It’s important to give builders the possibility to develop new products for their users. 
It’s still the early days for RGB and Taro, so it’s still hard to assess what these protocols will look like or how they will be used, but we definitely monitor these closely and look forward to build on it.

Is centralization always a bad thing in your opinion?

No, I definitely don’t think so. Centralization is the most efficient way to manage a lot of processes, that don’t require decentralization. Decentralization is of paramount importance to fight censorship and we should do more for Bitcoin privacy. But centralization is not intrinsically bad.

In August Alby set an example of LN Markets in a tweet to find web app developers to help implement Lightning in their own dev project.
Do you also think it is possible for a lot of web applications to implement Lightning payments and/or passwordless login?

Yes, all applications could easily implement it. Today, Lightning usage is quite niche. Most web apps do not feel that they need to absolutely address the Bitcoin or Lightning segment. It’s more a business than a tech question.

How many people work at LN Markets? And how do you find skilled developers?

We are 9 in the LN Markets team. We have been lucky to never look for team mates really long.. All of our hires come from our own community! Which is really great. Come and Victor are LN Markets co-founders with me. Come is our CEO, Victor is our CTO and I’m COO. We have 5 developers: Fanis, Lounes, Yoannn and Kilian in France, and Kim in Berlin. And of course of community manager Koty, one of our kindest users before joining us.

Could the gambling industry or sports betting,… be a big future players for the LN?

Yes, it could really be fun to explore. Though we have already plenty to do with financial use cases for the moment. 
We’re going to sponsor a world cup betting tournament organized by Einundzwanzig, a German speaking group of Bitcoiners, with 6 million sats of gains. The proceeds will  go the great Bitcoin Ekasi initiative in South Africa, it’s gonna be fun!