The Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s layer 2 scaling platform, has a privacy problem. Receiving payments, requesting refunds, and opening and closing payment channels (connections between Lightning nodes) – all raise privacy concerns for users of the payment network.

Those concerns have inspired protocol-based solutions like “Basis of Lightning Technology 12,” or simply, BOLT 12, a proposed solution that not only enhances privacy, but also introduces many other useful features. (“BOLTs” are Lightning draft proposals similar to Bitcoin improvement proposals or “BIPs.”)

(by Frederick Munawa)