Strike Now Supports Sending Payments to BOLT 12 Offers
"Today, we're excited to announce our support for BOLT 12 Offers, a revolutionary technology that enables a more private, versatile, and user-friendly way to send and receive sats over the Bitcoin Lightning Network," announcedTom Kirkpatrick in a blog post.
- "Whilst we have successfully achieved our goal of enabling BOLT 12 payments from Strike, our initial integration only supports a basic Offer payment flow. However, it paves the way for exciting and more advanced BOLT 12 features over time," writes the developer.
"...with much of this groundwork now done and out there in the open source universe, we’ve proven that there is a viable path to deliver a BOLT 12 experience with LND, today. We’re excited to see the continued evolution of BOLT 12 as more services and node operators upgrade over the coming months and years," he added.
How it works
Here's how Strike uses LND, LDK and LNDK to facilitate onion message routing and the BOLT 12 protocol:
- Payment Request: The Strike user initiates a payment by scanning a BOLT 12 Offer QR code or entering a human readable DNS address from where a BOLT 12 Offer can be fetched using BIP 353.
- LDK Offer parsing: LDK is used to parse the BOLT 12 Offer to extract payment details.
- Onion Message Construction: LNDK utilizes LDK's libraries and LND’s gRPC APIs to construct onion messages containing the invoice request details.
- Relaying the Onion: The constructed onion message is then relayed through the Lightning Network by LND, traversing various nodes until it reaches the destination node specified in the Offer, where the onion message is unwrapped, revealing the request embedded in the message.
- Retrieving a Blinded Path: The destination node uses onion messaging to send back an Invoice that includes a blinded path detailing how it can be paid.
- Sending the Payment: LNDK interacts with LND's gRPC API to initiate the payment process.
"If you'd live to give it a try, you can donate to the Human Rights Foundation's BOLT 12 Offer by scanning the QR Code below, or by paying to their BOLT 12 Lightning Address - bolt12@hrf.org," was stated in the blog post.
