Founder: Roy Sheinfeld, Roy Erez, Yaakov Slama
Establishment date: 2018
Head office location: remote
Amount of Bitcoin held in the Treasury: Breez Lightning nodes hold dozens of them.
Number of employees: 11
Website: https://breez.technology/
Public or private? private
roy sheinfeld says The time for orange pills is over.
Mr. Scheinfeld is one of the three founders of Breez; bitcoin lightning networkbelieves that bringing people into the Bitcoin fold through education has contributed to the expansion of the Bitcoin community, but will not be the driving force behind the adoption of the next wave of Bitcoin users.
“We ended up with an orange pill. You probably had an orange pill. Everyone participating in the Bitcoin ecosystem right now probably had an orange pill.” But I don’t feel like that circle is widening, and I don’t think that circle is widening fast enough,” Scheinfeld told Bitcoin Magazine. “What drives adoption, what drives people to change their behavior, is technology.”
That’s why Sheinfeld, a software developer by trade, is committed to making it easier for enterprises to adopt the Lightning Network.he wants to see More apps and services are using Lightning for payments instead of building Lightning-specific apps. Instead of developers creating more Lightning wallets, think of Spotify leveraging Lightning to stream satellites to creators.
“I always use digital cameras as an example. When digital cameras were first released on the market, everyone started using them instead of film cameras, but human behavior didn’t change.” says Scheinfeld.
“It wasn’t until digital cameras were integrated into mobile devices that human behavior changed. Today, you can’t sit down to eat without taking a photo of your food before you eat it. Change, and that’s what I want to see happen with Bitcoin as well,” he added.
“I want to change human behavior because the utility of Bitcoin is something that people cannot resist and use.”
And Mr. Scheinfeld is ideally placed to facilitate this change, as he has had repeated conversations with Lightning since the network’s inception.
History of Breeze
Breez was founded in 2018 and has been around for almost as long as the Lightning Network itself.
“We were the first company to start doing business on the Lightning Network,” Scheinfeld 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 started by releasing their first release. lightning wallet. Breez became the first company to do this. Lightning Service Provider (LSP), a term that Scheinfeld himself coined. Scheinfeld and his friends. We also brought to market the first version of Podcasting 2.0, allowing users to stream satellite to their favorite podcasters. This service was popularized by. fountain.
But over the past year and a half, Scheinfeld and the Breez team have Breeze SDKBecause, as Scheinfeld shared, “We believe Lightning should be a commodity. Everyone should be able to use Lightning if they want to.”
Breez SDK
Breez SDK is a free open source software (FOSS) non-custodial solution that can be used by any person, business, or institution. What supports this is blockstream green lightThis allows Breez to run end-user nodes in the cloud while keeping the service non-custodial, as the private key remains in the hands of the user.
The Breez SDK allows users to exchange Bitcoin between the base chain and the Lightning Network, providing fiat onramps from third-party providers.
For example, if an online retailer wants to accept Bitcoin payments via Lightning, all they need to do is incorporate the Breez SDK API. Breez’s GitHub You can access apps and websites, but it doesn’t take long.
“From our experience working with partners, it can take several days to add Lightning payments to an app,” says Sheinfeld. “For some partners, it takes longer than that, several weeks, but that’s not because the Breez SDK is complicated to use. What’s really important is the user experience you want to provide when integrating Lightning payments.”
Scheinfeld also added that “using the API programmatically is very easy for developers of all kinds,” adding that Breez is designed to be free and open source to reflect the nature of Bitcoin. I made it clear that there is. And this design is still beneficial for Breez, as the company benefits when end-user payments are routed through the node.
Companies and products such as Lerai, bit box and blockstream green Now that we’re using the Breez SDK, I wonder why more companies and products aren’t adopting this new technology.
What’s stopping Breez SDK from growing adoption?
Given that Breez offers a convenient way to incorporate Lightning into your apps, why aren’t more companies taking advantage of it?
From Scheinfeld’s perspective, this challenge revolves around how most people still perceive Bitcoin.
“I think a lot of people still don’t believe in Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, even some Bitcoiners,” Scheinfeld said.
“As companies like Breez lower the barrier to entry and enable developers to integrate Lightning, this challenge is no longer a technical challenge,” he added.
“What we hope to do is get enough bottom-up traction from the partners we work with to cross the credibility chasm of Bitcoin. It’s about being able to understand, “Okay, Bitcoin is money.”
Scheinfeld went on to share how they can begin to bridge that gap by first building “an ecosystem of Bitcoin-focused applications that allow people to interact with Bitcoin as a form of money.” .
Rather than trying to convince people that BTC is the best form of currency, he believes BTC will prove it by competing with fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies. To start this race, he wants Lightning to be integrated into multi-coin wallets before it is eventually integrated into fintech applications.
“There’s no reason why PayPal or Revolut wouldn’t integrate Lightning,” Scheinfeld said.
“Once we penetrate all these types of exchange service mediums, we are ready to move to the next level of integrating Bitcoin into mainstream applications,” he added.
“My time horizon is 10 years. I hope to see Lightning integrated into mainstream applications like Uber and Spotify within the next 10 years.”
Avoiding regulatory oversight
Just a week before speaking with Scheinfeld. phoenix walletone of the most popular Lightning wallets on the market today. has chosen to cease providing services to customers in the United States.fearing that this would lead to stricter regulations on self-custodial wallets. US Department of Justice arrests Samurai Wallet developer.
When I asked Mr. Scheinfeld if he was concerned that U.S. regulators might come after Breeze next, he calmly replied, “No,” before explaining why.
“To be clear, in the United States, it is recognized as a self-custodial wallet,” Scheinfeld said. “Self-regulation is the worst thing that can happen. Self-regulation should be done, but it doesn’t need to be any more extreme than the law.”
He went on to explain that self-custody wallet manufacturers do not need to obtain a money transmitter license or a money services business license.
“Breeze does not control users’ funds,” Scheinfeld emphasized.
Recognize Lightning FUD
Many people in the Bitcoin space believe that the Lightning Network is failureThis is because network penetration is slow.
Scheinfeld argues that some of the criticism is justified.
“We deserve Lightning FUD,” Scheinfeld said.
“There’s good marketing, and there’s bad marketing. Bad marketing is selling something that doesn’t exist. Lightning is the magical solution to all of Bitcoin’s problems, including infinite scalability, free transactions, and perfect UX. There is no such thing,” he explained.
“In the early days of the network, we didn’t explain Lightning very well and created a hype that the technology couldn’t deliver, so it’s understandable that we’re going to get some backlash.”
However, Scheinfeld continued to be optimistic about the role Lightning will play as new technologies emerge for Bitcoin.
“If you look at the state of technology today, Kash, Fedi And Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions, all these different solutions interoperate using Lightning,” he said.
What’s next for Brees?
In the coming weeks, Breez will launch a business-to-business (B2B) marketing campaign aimed at engaging companies that are not currently aware of the power of Bitcoin and Lightning.
“Marketing is fundamentally about bridging the gap between the power of technology and its usefulness,” Scheinfeld said. “If people can’t fill the gap themselves, someone needs to help them fill the gap, and that requires good marketing.”
And Scheinfeld believes the time is right for Breeze to start marketing and servicing companies outside of the Bitcoin space.
“For far too long, we have only been in the Bitcoin community,” Scheinfeld said.
“We need to get out of the bubble and start pushing our services beyond the ecosystem,” he added.
“Cryptographic solutions need to be Lightning-aware. Fintech solutions need to be Lightning-aware. Mainstream applications need to be Lightning-aware. That’s what we’re going to focus more on going forward. ”
