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There is a new project in which it is possible to rent e-bikes paying with Bitcoin through the Lightning Network.
At the moment, there is a prototype of this bike that is fully functional and has been demonstrated in a short video on Twiter. The development has been in charge of the German programmer Matthias Steinig.
Hey, here's the promised video of using the lightning-bike, hope you like it! pic.twitter.com/ul2gBXc2id
— Matthias Steinig (@leblitzdick) October 12, 2018
The bike has a device that controls the flow of electricity depending on the payment that was made using the Lightning Network. The payment can be done in just a few steps scanning a QR code with the mobile phone. Users without knowledge about Bitcoin or virtual currencies can pay for it without having technical knowledge.
The e-bike implementation allows users to pay for electricity replenishments using microtransactions via the Lightning Network (LN). The LN is the ultimate scaling solution that is being developed for Bitcoin and that would allow it to scale without major issues. It might be possible to process millions of transactions for almost no cost.
Using the Lighting Network users can process microtransactions in just a few seconds rather than waiting hours or several minutes and paying larger amounts of fees. At the same time, there is very little delay between an individual initiating a payment and receiving access to the full potential of the bike.
The official GitHub page of the project reads as follows:
“The lightning-bike is an e-bike (pedelec) whose electrical support can be booked for a certain period of time. It uses lightning as a payment system to activate this feature. You select on the display how long you want to drive, get a qr-code that you scan and pay for with your lightning mobile APP, after that the power for the selected period is turned on.”
The project has been made open source for others to learn from and replicate it. However, he did not mention whether he wants to make it for commercial use.
During a conversation with BTCManager, Steinig said that the main intention behind the project was to create a system that could help to increase mass adoption using the Lightning Network. At the same time, he said that it can be tested and prove the stability of the network.
In the future, he mentioned that the intention is to keep working on this project, although he is now focused on another development. He did not reveal more information about it yet.
The Lightning Network entered a testing phase in 2017 with several individuals from the crypto community being involved on it. At the time of writing, the network has a capacity of 456 BTC, which is equal to more than $1.6 million. At the same time, there are 4,379 nodes and 13,215 channels.
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