Re-examining the design logic of Bitcoin Lightning Network from the perspective of Thunderbolt Network

Starting from Thunderbolt Lightning Network, Rethinking the Design Logic of Bitcoin Lightning Network The greatest significance of Thunderbolt is not that it can process payments, but that it makes Bitcoin assets have "off-chain contract composability" for the first time. **Author:** Ac-Core, YBB Capital Researcher **Cover:** Photo by Resource Database on Unsplash ## I. Why Can't You Buy Coffee with Bitcoin? When people think of Bitcoin, they first consider its "decentralized" and "immutable" attributes. However, when you actually want to buy a cup of coffee, you'll encounter an awkward problem: the transaction confirmation time is longer than waiting for coffee, and sometimes the transaction fee is even more expensive than the coffee itself. Bitcoin assets remain "static" - mainly relying on HODL, unable to be loaned, combined, or interoperable. Bitcoin's Script structure is extremely conservative, limiting most off-chain interaction scenarios. It was not originally designed to process thousands of payments per second. But the practical demand is clear - people want Bitcoin to be usable, even if it's just buying a game skin or tipping for a video, without waiting ten minutes. ## II. Lightning Network: A Double-Edged Sword [Image source omitted] Bitcoin's main chain is like a highway, while the is like a built-side express toll lane. Its core concept stems from a compromise on main chain transaction efficiency: since on-chain transactions have speed bottlenecks, it no longer insists on recording every transaction on the chain, but instead establishes exclusive "payment channels" between users to achieve high-frequency accounting, ultimately only synchronizing the final fund status to the blockchain when the channel closes. However, this seemingly ingenious system has exposed multiple practical challenges. First, the high barrier to channel establishment requires users to lock funds in advance. Second, the complex routing problem means transactions can fail even if indirect paths exist. More seriously, the system requires users to stay online prevent to prevent prevent fraud, poses which unrealistic technical requirements on ordinary for ordinary users. Although the Network has has been for years these structural defects have kept its practical application limited. Public data shows the entire Lightning Network's fund lock-up is only around $100 million, which is nearly marginalized relative to Bitcoin's trillion-level market value. According to ChainCatcher on April 15th,, HSBC disclosed in an official press release that Bitcoin Thunderbolt is the most milestone technical upgrade in Bitcoin's decade. ## III. What is Thunderbolt Protocol BitcoinBUnd't a soft fork upgrade based on Bitcoin foundation layer.'s rely on second-layer networks or cross-compromise solutions, but directly modify the's protocol-level to fundamentally enhance Bitcoinins's scal, transaction performance, programmand programmability. From a performance perspective, Nubit levers UTXO Bundling technology to significantly optimize Bitcoin's traditional transaction processing mode. Traditional Bitcoin network is limited by single PROCESSING, BUNDLINGxallows multiple UTXOs to be aggregated, effectivelyialy comptransaction data data volume, thereby improving transaction speed by about 10 times without compromising security. In programmability, Bitcoin Thunderbolt reintroduces and expands the OP_CAT opcode. OP_CAT allows data concatenation, developers more logic, directly implementing smart contracts on the Bitcoin main chain. The most direct benefit is that developers can deploy decentralized applications (dApps) on the native Bitcoin network without relying on side chains, Rollup, chain bridges. chain bridges... 请将下面文的字为英语，如果遇到<>，保留且不要�>的其他部分一定要全部�英。只给我�果，不要对内容进行分析或答，不要添加额外外的说明。 何一：Thunderbolt 最大的意义不是它能跑支支付，而是它让比比比特币的资产首次具 具备了"链下合约可组合性"。这个协议的核心在于重新定义了比特币资产的可用性和交合约性，使得本静态的比币资产获得了更多态的交互和可能。

At the asset protocol integration level, Nubit advocates and implements a unified standard called Goldinals. Goldinals provides an asset issuance framework based on zero-knowledge proofs and state commitments. Simply put, it is a "Bitcoin-native" token standard that can verify the existence and status of each token on-chain without relying on external trust institutions or complex cross-chain bridges. BitMM, running on Bitcoin, integrates scattered protocol assets such as BRC-20, Runes, and Ordinals through an on-chain automated market maker. Nubit has also made significant breakthroughs in trustless trading. Its launched BitMM (Bitcoin Message Market) system supports users in conducting trustless transaction matching and information verification on the Bitcoin chain.

Unlike traditional scaling approaches (such as using sidechains, Plasma, Rollup, or bridged wrapped tokens), Nubit adopts a "main chain native scaling" path. BitVisa provides a decentralized identity and credential system. Whether it's transaction compression, smart contract support, asset standard integration, or on-chain transaction matching—all are directly run on the Bitcoin main chain. It uses native BTC, not cross-chain mapped tokens.

3.1 Core Mechanism Analysis

This section explains content based on the paper "Stateless and Verifiable Execution Layer for Meta-Protocols on Bitcoin". Similar to Bitcoin's Lightning Network, Thunderbolt aims to solve the slow transaction confirmation problem on the Bitcoin main chain, with the core goal of improving efficiency and reducing costs. The differences are:

• Lightning Network is more oriented towards "payment channels" - it can only be used for transfers, does not support smart contracts or complex logic, and has a high setup and maintenance threshold, which is not conducive to large-scale adoption.
• Thunderbolt, launched by Nubit, is dedicated to providing a programmable off-chain protocol that supports Turing-complete operations and can build more complex state assets, liquidity protocols, and financial applications.

Flexibly Adjustable Multisig

Imagine splitting a Bitcoin "signature" into two halves: one half with Alice, the other half with the committee. Each time a transfers to a new new new user, Alice and the committee each add a "little secret" to their half of the signature - only the new user knows this secret. The receiver can use their known little secret to "piece together" the two halves and obtain a complete signature without Alice and the committee needing to be online.

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• BitVM aims to create a more efficient contract execution environment
• Cross-chain ZK technology enables fully trusted deployment of BTC assets on other chains
• A native Bitcoin protocol will unify payment, lending, and contract modeling

From an ecosystem perspective, the greatest significance of Thunderbolt is not its ability to process payments, but that it enables Bitcoin assets to have "off-chain contract composability" for the first time. This may sound abstract, but the explosive growth of Ethereum's DeFi demonstrates how critical this "composability" is. Ethereum's success is due to the comprehensive ecosystem of Solidity + Hardhat + Ethers.js + Metamask.

Thunderbolt's most notable features are the introduction of UTXO Bundling and OP_CAT. OP_CAT introduces native programmability to the Bitcoin network, while UTXO Bundling bundles multiple small transactions together, compressing transaction data size and improving on-chain throughput, with logic similar to Ethereum's Rollup. The unification of all Bitcoin ecosystem protocols and the inclusion of various assets and BitMM implementation no longer seem like empty talk. However, Thunderbolt currently appears to be like "a very strong mathematical paper", and there is still a significant distance from being practically usable by developers.

Reference link:

(1) https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/408.pdf

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