Breez Wallet, a Lightning Network (LN) focused wallet, has shown an implementation that allows users to receive LN payments without being online. The service, which will be included in an upcoming non-custodial wallet app, leverages the wallets’ own SDK using mobile notifications to receive this payment without requiring involvement from the recipient.
Breez Presents Solution for Offline Lightning Network Payments
Breez, a Lightning Network (LN) focused wallet, has shown its solution to tackle the problem of offline payments in the protocol. Due to its inner workings, both parties in a transaction need to be online when an LN payment happens, making its use cumbersome for some applications.
However, Breez has used its software stack to engineer a solution that allows these payments to go through even with the receiving party being offline. The organization showed this solution in a post on X, where an unnamed upcoming non-custodial wallet by Breez receives an LN payment being offline using notifications.
In an earlier post, Breez co-founder and CEO Roy Sheinfeld examined the alternatives for solving the offline payments problem in LN and described the one Breez is leveraging. Sheinfeld explained that Breez implemented push notifications in its latest SDK, which allows service providers to send messages to the app to receive the payment without user intervention, automatizing the task.
Sheinfeld recognizes that this solution needs work from the developers, given they need to set up notification delivery services for these messages. However, this allows for a better user experience because the app doesn’t need to be active in the background to receive payments.
Nonetheless, he also acknowledged the limitations of this solution, explaining that it depends on a notification service managed by a third party like Apple or Google, and called for implementing alternatives at a protocol level. He declared:
Mobile notifications are an improvement, but not a cure-all. They only work on mobile devices, obviously, and this approach won’t work if the device is off or the user has disabled the notifications required.
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