Yesterday came the announcement of a new token by Lightning Labs. It is called LSAT and will be used for authentication and payment for APIs.
1/ Today we're releasing LSAT, a Lightning-native protocol to manage paid access to APIs, apps, and websites.
LSAT greatly improves privacy with no need for usernames, passwords, or credit cards.
The Lightning-native web is the future, join us! 🔮https://t.co/8PVgrF9oSw
— Lightning Labs⚡️ (@lightning) March 30, 2020
The name of the new LSAT token, which is also a protocol, comes from the acronym Lightning Service Authentication Tokens.
It was developed by Lightning Labs and can be used both as an authentication tool and as a payment mechanism, “ticket”, to pay the APIs.
This token will allow the use of different APIs but with the advantage of not requiring access credentials; moreover, these can be integrated to take advantage of payment APIs to create ones that take advantage of this protocol.
Everything is described and compared with the famous website cookies, but with the advantage of being encrypted and verifiable: in this way, it is possible to automatically provide the credentials of the relevant APIs that are recalled.
Considering the fact that it is based on the use of both http/2 or gRPC, and the Lightning Network protocol, it is easy to conceive its integration on both the web and crypto side, as it could implement a crypto wallet without problems.
Obviously, this is just a draft of how it could be used and its functions, but developers need to start implementing them. It is difficult to predict if the technology will be implemented or not and in what way.
Only recently there have been problems with fines and closures on the Lightning Network protocol, which is still far from being a perfect and easy-to-use system for the masses.
In fact, according to a recent study, there would be more BTC on Ethereum than on Lightning Network.
Moreover, a few weeks ago, Litecoin’s founder Charlie Lee, who had bet with Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com on the mass use of LN, recently lost because BCH is more used in stores than on Lightning.
