Introduction to Breez

The app and SDK that are revolutionizing the paradigm of Lightning Network use

In this article I will tell you some introductory informations and feelings about Breez, the popular app and the Breez SDK, which is going to become a revolution for the capacity of integrate whatever application to the Lightning Network.

I personally started developing on this SDK in order to integrate Lightning in all the software I am working on, because I love how simple and smooth I can apply Lightning features to any application out there. The results are astonishing.

What is Breez

Breez is a very veteran lighting company in the Bitcoin lighting ecosystem. Actually started with the inception of the lighting network back in early 2018. It has been working to bring lighting to the masses. Specifically what Breez want to do is to build interfaces, end user interfaces and developer interfaces that allows people to utilize the peer to peer payments that are enabled by Bitcoin.

So to bring Bitcoin to the masses by providing everyone an easy access to the lighting network. How? With non-custodial access, meaning Breez wants users to maintain their sovereignty while interacting with the lighting network.

The well-known app Breez exists both on the App Store and Google Play is the Breeze app that maybe some of you are already using. This app is built on the LND implementation. It has several functionalities, several applications built into the Breeze app. It has a non-custodial lightning wallet, meaning there's a real fully featured lightning node that is running on your mobile device when you're using the Breeze app. It also contains a point of sale interface. It also contains a podcast player that allows you to stream sets to your content creators. And it contains a built-in lighting service provider that we brought to market back in 2019.

The interesting thing about the Breeze app is that the company has done a lot in order to improve the non-custodial lighting experience throughout the years.

Breez invented the lightning service providers notion, implemented the channels on the fly creation, implemented the zero-conf channels, optimized neutrino.

A lot work has been done on the technical level to allow users to experience the lightning network with less of a hassle. And everything that we've done on the technical level was great for the user experience of lightning.

Introduction to the SDK

We decided to build an SDK, a development kit that every service, every vendor and every company will be able to use Breez infrastructure, non-custodial infrastructure in order to integrate lightning payments either to send a lightning payment or to receive a lightning payment in their experience, in their own applications.

Basically, we want lightning to be accessible everywhere, and we want lightning to remain non-custodial.

The goal is to allow every company, every vendor and every service out there that is interested in integrating lightning payments to be able to do so easily without becoming a lightning expert using this development kit. And that's why this kit has been build as a non-custodial lightning SDK that allow developers of a new and existing app to integrate lightning payments into their own services and application without being a lightning expert.

Breeze SDK is to provide an end-to-end solution that allows developers to provide a fully featured lightning experience that includes not only end user nodes, it includes providing users with liquidity and includes on-chain interoperability.

How is the API engineered? A simple and seamless API that integrates the various pillar in a single API code. So, for example, if you want to send the payment, you just call one API to send the lightning payment, and the API assembles and integrates all the various components that are needed in order to facilitate this lightning payment.

One shortcoming of the current lightning experience is that the balance is scattered around multiple applications, meaning you don't have the fiat-like experience where you just put your credit card or debit card in an application and the application interacts with the same balance. Multiple applications interact with the same balance. So you can have as a user, multiple applications that interact with your same “bank account”.

In a nutshell, Breez created a hybrid architecture where the node is running in the cloud and the keys resides on user's devices and multiple applications can run against the same node and therefore can utilize the same balance from multiple applications.

Try to imagine the difference. Now you need to topup different balances on different providers, and your Sats are located in many different nodes and managed by different applications. So you have multiple Bitcoin balances floating around in various applications.

Breez changes the paradigm, achieving multiple applications interfacing with the same node while remaining non-custodial. And I'll say non-custodial once again, because the solution is trustless. So I would say the solution is trust minimized in the sense that Breeze or Greenlight or the LST or any component that is integrated into the bridge's decay. None of the entities have access to users' funds and users retain full sovereignty. All of this, however, remains friction-less for end users.

Repository is located here: https://github.com/breez/breez-sdk

I started developing using the Breez SDK using python bindings. I see how powerful is to maintain the sovereignty while developing fast and easy code. I am doing this in order to extend functionalities of my running systems, using this new paradigm. In the next articles I will tell you more about the projects in which I am using and integrating the Breez SDK into.