Is “pay for coffee” your standard for micro-transactions? You may want to think again…
Cryptograffiti, an anonymous artist dedicated to working with topics related to crypto and blockchain technologies recently published in Reddit a post claiming to have conducted a “micro auction” to sell a small work of art made from a dollar bill.
The piece, which barely measures 3.55cm X 4.44cm is called “Black Swan” and was auctioned on the cryptograffiti website. However, the auction had a very curious feature: The winner of the work would be whoever offered the least amount of money for it.
I sold this tiny artwork for 1 millisatoshi ($0.000000037) – story in comments from Bitcoin
With this initiative, Cryptograffiti wanted to create a piece of art that could be considered as the world’s least expensive artwork. Also, given the characteristics of the auction, it was evident that the strategy also promoted the use of Lightning Network as a way to make transfers in Bitcoin almost instantaneously and with practically no fees, being able to send even less than 1 Satoshi.
Cryptograffiti explains that beyond any financial or even artistic reason, the motivation behind this type of actions is technological. Maybe in a future, micropayments could help artists to find better ways to transact, buying small amounts of materials or even using cryptocurrencies for little things such as buying a candy, pay for coffe or similar needs:
The promise of micropayments was instrumental in my becoming an artist in the space. In 2012, I first read about the idea of combatting email spam/DDOS attacks by charging negligible amounts of money to send messages/login. These were the first creative use cases I had heard for cryptocurrency. It inspired me to think of ways micropayments could benefit artists. And in 2013 I began posting street art around the San Francisco Bay Area/Pacific NW with a public facing wallet so passersby could send small amts of bitcoin if they liked the work.
I’m excited about a future where micropayments are omnipresent. Artists paid by the view…writers by the poem…musicians by the listen. Every day interactions complemented by positive monetary reinforcement such as tipping someone who let you merge into traffic.
Hopefully this micro auction inspires others to think big about the future of Bitcoin.
Lightning Network is a second layer solution that solves much of the problem of the scalability of Bitcoin, however, is still in the testing and development phase, so it is difficult to predict an accurate date for its official release.
The artwork was recently sold to the lowest bidder: an anonymous user who offered one millisatoshi ($0.000000037) for the piece. This unit is much less than the minimum value allowed for a standard Bitcoin (BTC) transaction.
Lightning Network: A Promisory Future That Still Needs Time To Grow
The Lightning Network development team has been making significant advances in the design of this solution. Also, the community has played a fundamental role in the strength of the network. As reported by Ethereum World News, Lightning Network had gained several thousand followers, reaching historic highs.
Also, other apps such as dedicated wallets and an open canvas have been of great importance to boost growth in the user base. With that, the adoption of LN, even in beta phase is growing, and cases like that of Cryptograffiti are representations of the infinite number of uses that can be seen once LN is fully deployed.
Although there is no precise date for the official launch of LN, there are already strong expectations on the part of experts. In fact, recently Roger Ver and Charlie Lee bet on possible massive adoption of the protocol: While Ver showed his skepticism, Charlie Lee expressed his optimism regarding its development, which he expects to be ready by 2019.
