Founders: Roy Sheinfeld, Roi Erez and Yaacov Slama
Foundation date: 2018
Headquarters Location: Remote
Amount of bitcoin held in Treasury: Dozens of people held in Breez Lightning nodes
Number of employees: eleven
Website: technology/”>https://breez.technology/
Public or Private? Private
Roy Sheinfeld says the time for orange pills is over.
Sheinfeld, one of the three founders of Breez, a company that provides a software development kit (SDK) to institutions looking to use the bitcoin Lightning Network, believes that while introducing people to the world of bitcoin through education has helped expand the bitcoin community, it will also not be the driving force to incorporate the next wave of bitcoin users.
“They gave me orange pills. You probably had orange pills. Everyone in the bitcoin ecosystem right now was probably on the orange pill, but I don't feel like the circles are expanding, and they're definitely not expanding fast enough,” Sheinfeld told bitcoin Magazine. “What drives adoption, what drives change in people's behavior, is technology.”
That's why Sheinfeld, a software developer by trade, is committed to making it easier for businesses to employ the Lightning Network. he wants to see technology/we-need-more-apps-with-lightning-not-more-lightning-apps-b5f37f9ac8bd”>more apps and services use Lightning for payments, not building more Lightning-specific apps. Think of Spotify leveraging Lightning to stream sats to creators instead of developers creating more Lightning wallets.
“I always give the example of a digital camera. When the digital camera first came on the market, everyone started using it as a substitute for the film camera, but that didn't change human behavior,” Sheinfeld said.
“Only when the digital camera was integrated into a mobile device did human behavior change. Nowadays, you can't sit down to eat without taking a photo of your food before eating it. That was a dramatic change in human behavior, and that is what I want to happen with bitcoin,” she added.
“I want to change human behavior because the utility of bitcoin is something that people will not be able to resist or use.”
And Sheinfeld is ideally positioned to help facilitate this change, having been iterating with Lightning since the network's inception.
Breez's story
Founded in 2018, Breez is practically as old as the Lightning Network itself.
“We were the first company to start a business on the Lightning Network,” Sheinfeld said. “Just as the first mainnet transactions appeared on the Lightning Network, we founded Breez to help transform bitcoin from a store of value to a medium of exchange.”
Breez's team began by launching the first technology/mobile/”>lightning wallet. By doing this, Breez became the first Lightning Service Provider (LSP), a term coined by Sheinfeld himself. Sheinfeld and company. also launched the first version of podcasting 2.0, allowing users to stream sats to their favorite podcasters, a service that has been popularized by Fountain.
But for the last year and a half, Sheinfeld and the Breez team have focused on developing the technology/sdk/”>Breeze SDK, because, as Sheinfeld shared, “We believe Lightning should be a commodity. “Everyone should have the ability to use Lightning if they want to.”
The Breez SDK
Breez SDK is a free and open source software (FOSS) non-custodial solution that can be used by any individual, company, or institution. It is driven by Blockstream green lightwhich allows Breez to run end-user nodes in the cloud while maintaining the service non-custodial as the private keys remain in the hands of the user.
The Breez SDK also allows users to exchange bitcoins between the base chain and the Lightning Network and provides fiat access from third-party providers.
If online retailers, for example, want to accept bitcoin payments via Lightning, all they have to do is incorporate the Breez SDK API from Breez GitHub in your app or website, which doesn't take much time.
“I can tell you from our experience working with our partners that it takes days to add Lightning payments to your app,” Sheinfeld said. “For some partners, it takes longer (weeks) but it is not due to the complexity of using the Breez SDK. “It’s really about the user experience they want to provide by integrating Lightning payments.”
Sheinfeld also added that “programmatic use of the API is very easy for any type of developer” and made it clear that Breez was designed to be free and open source to reflect the nature of bitcoin. And this design is still profitable for Breez, as the company makes money when payments from end users are routed through its nodes.
Companies and products like Relay, BitBox and Green Blockstream We now use the Breez SDK, but one can't help but wonder why more companies and products don't employ this new technology.
What's preventing wider adoption of the Breez SDK?
Since Breez provides a convenient way to incorporate Lightning into an app, why aren't more companies taking advantage of it?
From Sheinfeld's perspective, the challenge revolves around how bitcoin is still perceived by the majority.
“I think a lot of people still don't believe in bitcoin as a medium of exchange, even some Bitcoiners,” Sheinfeld said.
“As companies like Breez are lowering the barrier to entry and allowing developers to integrate Lightning, the challenge is no longer a technical challenge,” he added.
“What we're hoping to do is get enough bottom-up traction from the partners we're working with and cross the bitcoin credibility chasm where when standards who aren't familiar with bitcoin hear 'bitcoin,' they understand, 'Okay. , bitcoin is money. I can send and receive bitcoins.'”
Sheinfeld went on to share how we started to cross that chasm by first creating an “ecosystem of bitcoin-centric apps that allow you to interact with bitcoin as a form of money.”
Instead of trying to convince people that btc is the best form of money, he believes that it will prove its worth by competing with fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies. To kick-start this competition, he wants to see Lightning integrated into multi-currency wallets, before seeing it integrated into fintech applications.
“There's no reason why PayPal or Revolut wouldn't integrate Lightning,” Sheinfeld said.
“Once you penetrate all these types of exchange service media, you will be ready to take it to the next level, which is the integration of bitcoin into mainstream applications,” he added.
“My term is 10 years. “I want a mainstream app like Uber or Spotify to integrate Lightning in the next 10 years.”
Avoid regulatory scrutiny
Just a week before talking to Sheinfeld, Phoenix Walletone of the most popular Lightning wallets on the market today, opted to stop serving US customers.fearing further regulatory crackdown on self-custody wallets following the US Department of Justice's arrest of Samourai Wallet developers.
When I asked Sheinfeld if he was nervous that American regulators might come after Breez next, he calmly responded with a “No” before giving his reasoning.
“Let's say it very clearly: having a self-custodial wallet is allowed in the United States,” Sheinfeld said. “Self-surveillance is the worst thing that can happen. “We should self-regulate, but we don’t need to take an extreme side that is more extreme than the law itself.”
He went on to explain that self-custodial wallet manufacturers are not required to have a money transmitter license or money services business license.
“Breez does not take control of user funds,” Sheinfeld stressed.
Recognizing FUD Lightning
Many in the bitcoin space consider the Lightning Network to be a failurebecause network adoption has been slow.
Sheinfeld maintains that some of the criticism is justified.
“We deserve the Lightning FUD,” Sheinfeld said.
“There is good marketing and bad marketing. Bad marketing is selling something that doesn't exist: Lightning is a magic solution to all of bitcoin's problems: infinite scalability, free transactions, and a seamless user experience. That does not exist,” he explained.
“We haven't done a very good job of explaining Lightning in these early years of the network and created a buzz that the technology couldn't live up to, so we deserve the backlash we've received.”
However, Sheinfeld went on to share that he is optimistic about the role Lightning will play as new technologies come to bitcoin.
“If you take a look at the current technological landscape, Cashew, It covers and bitcoin layer 2 solutions – all of these various solutions will interoperate with each other using Lightning,” he said.
What's next for Breez?
In the coming weeks, Breez will begin a business-to-business (B2B) marketing campaign that aims to onboard companies that are currently unaware of the power of bitcoin and Lightning.
“Marketing is basically about bridging the gap between the power of technology and the usefulness of technology,” Sheinfeld said. “If people don't close that gap themselves, someone needs to help them, and we need good marketing to do that.”
And Sheinfeld is convinced that the time has come for Breez to start marketing and servicing companies outside the bitcoin space.
“For too long we were just in the bitcoin community,” Sheinfeld said.
“We need to get out of the bubble and start pushing our offering beyond our ecosystem,” he added.
“crypto solutions need to take Lightning into account. Fintech solutions need to take Lightning into account. Mainstream applications need to take Lightning into account. That's what we're going to put more emphasis on in the future.”
