This Spongebob-Themed Tech Proves That Bitcoin's Lightning Is Advancing

Pinched from the cartoon, the term wumbo now describes one of the next milestones for bitcoin's lightning network, the payments layer bitcoin developers are heads-down on in order to solve the digital money's biggest problem: that it only supports a few users right now - let a worldwide ecosystem.

The change, which for the first time would lift the hard-coded limit on how much money can be locked up in a lightning channel at a given time, demonstrates just how far the lightning initiative as a whole has come.

Now, 574 of bitcoin - worth about $2 million - is stashed away in lightning channels, up from 1 bitcoin at the beginning of 2018.

Wumbo shows that lightning as a whole has progressed far enough that developers, as cautious as they are, think lightning ready - or at least, getting is closer to ready - for bigger transactions.

When a user decides to make payments to other users, there will be a new option, "Option i wumbo you wumbo", allowing users to open a channel with more bitcoin than is imposed by the current limit.

Once all code implementations update their software with this new option, users will be able to do this with just about anyone else on the lightning network.

With Wumbo, users can then open channels as large as they want, as long as they have the money to fund it.

To be clear lightning users aren't going to be able to "Wumbo" overnight.

Once Wumbo is coded up, there's nothing really stopping users from using it.

Since users have been using lightning for real payments - to the tune of $2 million - despite warnings against it, ZmnSCPxj wouldn't be surprised if users tap the capabilities of Wumbo the first chance they get.