Lightning Labs has announced the beta release of their highly-anticipated Lightning Network Daemon (LND), a developer-friendly software client used to access Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, Forbes reported.
The San Francisco-based Bitcoin startup said in a blog post that the release is intended for developers of future Lightning applications (Lapps) along with technical users and prospective routing node operators.
“Like the early days of the internet, it will start with advanced users with command-line interfaces and then evolve into a much more usable experience,” said Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark.
Stark added that Lightning Labs plans to make user-friendly Lightning-enabled wallets for desktop and mobile available later this year.
In addition to the release of the beta version of LND, Lightning Labs also announced seed financing from some of the biggest names in cryptocurrency and tech. Some of the most notable investors in Lightning Labs now include Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, former PayPal COO David Sacks and Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev.
Lightning Labs does not recommend users put large amounts of money into the system quite yet. Additionally, anyone who wants to use LND right now will also need to operate a Bitcoin (TIKER: BTC.EXANTE) or Litecoin (TIKER: LTC/USD.BITFINEX) full node (depending on which cryptocurrency they wish to use).