Founder: Jesse Shrader and Anthony Potdevin
Date founded: March 2021
Position of the headquarters: Nashville, TN
Number of employees: 10
Website: https://amboss.tech/
Public or private? Private
Jesse Shrader thinks that this will be an important year for the Lightning network.
With the price of Bitcoin on the rise and the Tether (USDT) that will arrive in Lightning, Shrader places that more and more companies and institutions will begin to see lightning for payments in the year to come.
And his company, Amboss, is ready to help make this vision a reality.
“We want to extend Bitcoin as a payment system and use Lightning to do it,” Shrader said to Bitcoin Magazine. “We want to make lightning a high efficiency and high performance system.
Through a suite of Shrader tools and services and the Amboss team have developed, they are ready on board the next wave of institutional users to the largest payments without permission from the world, especially now that USDT works on Lightning.
What is Amboss do
Amboss mainly provides intelligent payment infrastructures for digital payments using the Lightning network.
“We provide insights on people about what they should do to increase the efficiency of payments on the network,” said Shrader.
To achieve this, they offer a series of products and services.
One of the most remarkable of these is Amboss Space, who is an explorer of the Lightning network that uses automatic learning to help users recover information or connect to any node on the network.
Beyond their analysis software, Amboss also provides its customers with tools and services to help improve liquidity conditions on lightning.
One of these services is Magma Marketplace, which allows users to buy and sell liquidity on the lightning network. Using magma, users can provide liquidity – without sacrificing the custody of their bitcoin – for a performance.
Another is Hydro, an extension of magma. The software allows users to automate their liquidity purchases to better guarantee the success of payments.
(And Amboss also offers SLR, a suite of conformity for company customers with AML (Antirricla) reporting obligations).)
The software and Amboss analysis tools are created for high volume transactions, which are becoming easier to make on lightning.
“We measure the ability of companies to make payments with simulations,” explained Shrader. “We will help companies see how much part of the network can actually reach when they try a payment.”
The state of the lightning
Shrader is optimistic when it comes to lightning growth. With each passing day, users rely on the network to send more than simple micropayments.
“We successfully processed daily payments on Lightning, which I am defining between $ 10 and $ 4,000,” said Shrader. “We are working to further improve the skills of the network, with particular attention to decentralization.”
The larger payments of $ 4,000 are still difficult to process. Shrader explained that more capital is needed to help transform greater payments into reality.
However, he also noticed that the recent increase in the Bitcoin price helped the biggest payments to be more easily processed.
“What we have seen recently is that the price of Bitcoin has increased, which has increased the ability to settle on all lightning channels,” said Shrader. “Since the channels are called Bitcoin, it is as if we had more pipes.”
And while Shrader is optimistic about these larger pipes that allow a greater throughput, it also believes that the tether (USDT) that will arrive in Lightning will attract even more liquidity in the network.
Tether (USDT) on Lightning
At the end of last month, Lightning Labs announced that it is bringing USDT to Bitcoin and the Lightning network through the TAPROOT resource protocol.
This update allows Bitcoin service providers to integrate and accept the USDT more easily, which Shrader believes will be an advantage for lightning.
“One thing that is very clear is that the Tether has the product market in shape,” said Shrader.
“Last year, he served $ 10 trillions of payments, which exceeds Visa and Mastercard,” he added.
“It is very clear that the world wants US dollars.”
Shrader, a pragmatic, recognized the fact that many hardline bitcoiners have problems with the USDT running on Bitcoin and Lightning, and sympathizes with them, while appreciating the qualities of Bitcoin solid money.
At the same time, he thinks that the benefits of having USDT on Lightning clearly exceed the cons, since many still do not understand what Bitcoin is, nor are they willing to digest his volatility.
“Many have not yet taken the orange pill and include the advantages of Bitcoin,” he explained.
“I think Bitcoin is an incredible tool and I want to bring it to as many people as possible. Having said that, there are many problems with traditional and bitcoin payments has this system very safe and verifiable, which is something that I want to bring to the world on a large scale, “he added.
“While the action of Bitcoin prices is excellent for me, many people are afraid of volatility. If you have a resource with very low volatility such as the USDT, now on very safe tracks and without confidence, it is a huge victory. “
The problem USDT on lightning resolves
Shrader told how the first conference linked to the Bitcoin Conference hosted was actually called “Lightning for Corporations”. At the conference, the companies were encouraged to start paying the employees in Bitcoin on Lightning, without fully realizing the problems that this would have caused at that moment.
“What the employers have understood is that all 1099 who had to be subjected to employees were a hauling,” said Shrader. “And there was a lot of regulatory overloads with which they had to contend for.”
Shrader stressed that not only can pay employees in USDT on Lightning reducing accounting and regulatory headache, but also reduces part of the risk of counterparty associated with the use of banks, a reality with which Shrader is quite familiar.
“Our payroll crossed the Silicon Valley Bank,” said Shrader.
“And, at some point, the payroll provider contacted me to suspend my mid -month payroll after trying to pay the staff. I lost a half month track. This was all because of the fact that the Silicon Valley Bank is insolvent, “he added.
“So, if I can avoid the risk of counterparty in the financial system by passing to Bitcoin and Lightning, this means that they are in a much better place.”
[Author’s note: Some counterparty risk still exists when using USDT, as you have to trust that Tether holds actual U.S. dollars to back the tokenized ones it issues.]
The risks
Shrader noticed some of the risks of USDT on Bitcoin and Lightning, but did not seem too worried about them.
“There are some mev risks when you have different activities from a native blockchain resource that is exchanged on Chain,” said Shrader. “But Bitcoin already has ordinal inscriptions that create other resources, so that there is already a problem.”
Furthermore, it did not seem agitated when I raised the risk of a Bitcoin fork with consequent USDT on one of the chains that became useless, nor did you feel that there is a considerable risk of greatest economic nodes in the Bitcoin network, such as Coinbase, which custodles Bitcoins for Etf Bitcoin Spot USA, opting to support a “Tether fork” of Bitcoin, which could also include Other updates that could damage Bitcoin in the long run.
“Bitcoin’s consent is not determined by the custody of Bitcoin, therefore while an important company like Coinbase can support various changes or initiatives, this does not guarantee that the changes to the protocol are made,” said Shrader.
Instead of focusing on the risks associated with the USDT on Bitcoin, Shrader is doing the opposite.
“What is most interesting are probably the opportunities that unlocks in which you have a real ability to referee on Bitcoin itself,” said Shrader.
“Since each knot is able to transition into USDT and Bitcoin is also able to exchange each other in a native way on Lightning, you can send Bitcoin from a Lightning channel and receive USDT in another of your lightning channels,” he added.
“It can be simple like generating a USDT invoice and paying it with BTC, immediately rebalancing the participations.”
2025: the year of lightning
In the latest thoughts of Shrader from my interview with him, he shared two last key reasons why 2025 will be the year of Lightning.
The first is that keeping bitcoin is no longer necessary to use lightning.
“Until this year, if people or companies wanted to move on to Lightning, they had to first have Bitcoin – and this is a huge barrier,” explained Shrader. (Shrader added an answer to a follow-up question that, outside the United States, it is relatively easy and common to get access to the USDT.)
“The only Bitcoin market for the processing of payments is tiny. But this year we have removed that barrier and consumers can pay with another resource – USDT. There is already a large market for this, “he added.
(Shrader also observed that while the USDT is running on lightning tracks, Bitcoin still benefits, since the USDT is converted to Bitcoin while traveling through lightning. He added that “all that bitcoin that detaches himself in lightning makes him More rewarding to make a lightning knot work. “
In addition, Shrader observed that lightning users will pay only a small part of what they had paid in the transaction commissions using traditional financial tracks.
“We are providing liquidity less than 0.5%,” said Shrader.
“As a user of large payment cards, I am paying 4% for all that processing of payment and the money does not show up for days or weeks after payment,” he added.
“With lightning, the payments processing commissions descend almost 10 times.”
Give the Shrader points, it is difficult to imagine that 2025 will not be a great year for lightning.