The UXUY team turned up in Europe for the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference on October 13, 2023. It was on this same day that the team released the Bitcoin Lightning Network node, becoming the world’s first DEX to run a Lightning Network node. Bitcoin Amsterdam is Europe’s largest Bitcoin conference, co-organized by Bitcoin Magazine, BTC Inc., and Amsterdam Decentralized. During the conference, the UXUY team had insightful conversations with the core developers of the Bitcoin community and the Lightning Network community, consulted on BLIP proposed by UXUY, and received positive feedback.

We observed from the new faces seen at the Bitcoin Amsterdam conference that Bitcoin and decentralized consensus are gaining momentum. This is not just another conference; this is a celebration of innovations in Bitcoin.

As a guest speaker at Bitcoin Amsterdam, Edward Snowden, the exile who once exposed the United States’ “Prism” program, delivered a speech titled “Edward Snowden” via the Internet. His appearance was undoubtedly the biggest event of this conference. In addition, Stella Assange, the wife of journalist Julian Assange, who was imprisoned for exposing American war crimes, and Balaji Srinivasan, the author of “The Network State”, all took the stage to give brilliant speeches.

Although they are not the core developers of Bitcoin, nor the builders of ecological applications, their speeches indicate that the significance of Bitcoin is not limited to cryptocurrency itself, but has become a weapon to break hegemony and monopoly. Bitcoin is becoming an integral part of the decentralization process.

At the Bitcoin Amsterdam Conference, a discussion titled “Limitations Of Lightning” left a deep impression on the team.

Christian Decker from Blockstream said that the Bitcoin ecosystem is becoming more and more popular, and the previous popularity of the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 tokens exposed the Full Block problem. At the same time, the rise of the Lightning Network has given rise to a very interesting reaction to the Bitcoin protocol. He said:

That’s a very, very subtle interplay of the two protocols that it took years for us to realize that there are such attacks. And for me, that is very exciting as well, because there’s a new building site. I can sort of start building my protocols again. But looking from the outside, it might look very scary as well.

Niftynei, the founder of Base58, added, “Pinning attacks are, unlike such a niche thing. I think it’s a good way to say it. To understand what that is, this has to do with it when you’re trying to close the lightning channel and the mempool is full or maybe there’s someone who’s trying to prevent your closed transaction from reaching the miners, et cetera. In order to understand that problem with those kinds of technical issues around it, you have to understand how the mempool works. And it turns out that a lot of people don’t understand how the mempool works.”

Lightning Network core developer Rene Pickhardt expressed his views on how Lightning Network operators can better distribute liquidity. He said: “Definitely, I think liquidity adds are like a coordination mechanism, right? Like in most markets, it’s about coordination, right? Someone needs inbound liquidity, someone wants to sell that liquidity that they have available. And so it’s just helping those two parties coordinate the rate. So that’s kind of one of the cool things with markets is helping people find signals about where liquidity is needed. That’s the people that want to buy it and then where people are willing to provide it. And that’s how it was through the advertisement. “

After the conference, we left the charming city of Amsterdam. With the rapid development of the Lightning Network, crypto industry practitioners are beginning to pay attention. We left the conference with the resolve to UXUY continue to improve the Bitcoin ecosystem, promote the development of Lightning Network and Taproot Assets innovation, become an active contributor, and jointly shape our decentralized future.