Founder: Jesse Shrader and Anthony Potdevin
Date Founded: March 2021
Location of headquarters: Nashville, Tn
Number of employees: 10
Website: https://amboss.tech/
Public or private? Private
Jesse Shrader believes this will be an important year for Lightning Network.
With Bitcoin’s price on the climb and Tether (USDT), which comes to lightning, Shrader claims that more and more companies and institutions will start to see lightning for payments in the coming year.
And his company, Amboss, is ready to make this vision a reality.
“We want to expand Bitcoin as a payment system and use Lightning to do so,” Shrader told Bitcoin Magazine. “We want to make lightning a high -efficiency, high -performance system.
Through a package of tools and services that Shrader and the team at Amboss have evolved, they are ready to aboard the next wave of institutional users for the world’s largest permitted payment network – especially now that USDT is running on Lightning.
What Amboss is doing
Amboss primarily provides intelligent payment infrastructure for digital payments using Lightning Network.
“We provide insights to people about what to do to increase the effectiveness of payments on the network,” Shrader said.
To achieve this, they offer a number of products and services.
One of the most notable of these is Amboss Space, which is a Lightning Network Explorer that uses machine learning to help users get information on or connect to any knot on the network.
In addition to their analysis software, Amboss also provides its customers tools and services to improve liquidity conditions on lightning.
Such a service is Magma Marketplace that allows users to buy and sell liquidity on Lightning Network. Using magma, users can provide liquidity – without giving up custody of their Bitcoin – for a benefit.
Another is Hydro, an extension of Magma. The software allows users to automate their liquidity purchases to better secure success with payments.
(And Amboss also offers Reflex, a Compliance Suite for Business customers with AML (anti-money laundering) Reporting obligations.)
Amboss’ analysis software and tools are built for high -volume transactions, which will be easier to make on lightning.
“We measure companies’ ability to make payments with simulations,” Shrader explained. “We help companies see how much of the network they can actually reach when they try a payment.”
The state of lightning
Shrader is optimistic when it comes to the growth of lightning. With each existing day, users are dependent on the network to send more than just micropayments.
“We have successfully processing everyday payments on lightning, which I define as between $ 10 and $ 4,000 payments,” said Shrader. “We are working to further improve the network’s capabilities with a focus on decentralization.”
Payments greater than $ 4,000 are still difficult to process. Shrader explained that more capital is needed to help make treatment of larger payments a reality.
However, he also noted that the recent increase in Bitcoin’s award has helped larger payments to be treated more easily.
“What we recently saw is that the Bitcoin price has risen, which has increased the capacity for settlement across all lightning channels,” Shrader said. “Since the channels are Bitcoin -Denominated, it is as if we were getting bigger pipes.”
And although Shrader is optimistic about these larger pipes that allow for more flow, he also believes that Tether (USDT) ‘s will come to Lightning will attract even more liquidity to the network.
Tether (usdt) on the lightning
At the end of last month, Lightning Labs announced that it brings USDT to Bitcoin and Lightning Network via Taproot Assets Protocol.
This upgrade allows Bitcoin service providers to integrate and accept the more easier, which Shrader believes will be a blessing of lightning.
“One thing that is very clear is Tether has product marketing,” Shrader said.
“Last year, it earned the $ 10 trillion in payments exceeding Visa and MasterCard,” he added.
“It’s very clear that the world wants us dollars.”
Shrader, a pragmatist, acknowledged that many hardline bitcoiners have problems with USDT that runs on Bitcoin and Lightning, and he sympathizes with them as he appreciates Bitcoin’s Sound Money qualities.
At the same time, he believes that the benefits of having the USE clearly outweigh the disadvantages, as many still do not understand what Bitcoin is, nor are they willing to make its volatility.
“Many people have not yet taken the orange pill and understood the benefits of Bitcoin,” he explained.
“I think Bitcoin is an incredible tool and I want to bring it to as many people as possible. With that said, there are many problems with traditional payments, and Bitcoin has this very secure, auditable system, which is something that I want to bring to the world in scale, ”he added.
“While Bitcoin’s price action is great for me, many people are afraid of volatility. If you have an asset with very low volatility like USDT, now on very safe, trustless rails, it’s a huge gain. “
The problem that usdt on the lightning solves
Shrader told how the first Bitcoin-related conference Microstratey, which hosted, was actually called “Lightning for Companies.” At the conference, companies were encouraged to start paying employees in Bitcoin over lightning – without fully realizing the problems this would cause at that time.
“What employers realized was that all the 1099 to be sent to the employees was the hassle,” Shrader said. “And there was a whole bunch of legislative overhead that they also had to fight with.”
Shrader pointed out that not only paying employees in USDT over lightning reducing accounts and regulatory headaches, but it also reduces some of the counterparty risk of using banks – a reality that Shrader is quite well known with.
“Our payroll used to review the Silicon Valley Bank,” Shrader said.
“And at one point, the payroll provider contacted me to send my mid-month payroll after trying to pay the staff. I lost half a month’s runway. It was all because of the Silicon Valley Bank being insolvent, ”he added.
“So if I can avoid the counterparty risk in the financial system by moving to Bitcoin and Lightning, it means I’m in a much better place.”
[Author’s note: Some counterparty risk still exists when using USDT, as you have to trust that Tether holds actual U.S. dollars to back the tokenized ones it issues.]
The risk
Shrader noticed some of the risk of USDT on Bitcoin and Lightning, but didn’t seem too concerned about them.
“There are some MEV risks when you have any assets other than a blockchain’s original asset trading on chain,” Shrader said. “But Bitcoin already has ordinary inscriptions that create other assets, so the problem already exists.”
He also did not seem flusted when I brought the risk that a Bitcoin fork resulted in the fact that USDT on one of the chains became worthless, nor did he feel that there is a remarkable risk of greater financial nodes in Bitcoin – The network, such as Coinbase, like the Depoties Bitcoin for the US Spot Bitcoin ETFs and chooses to support a “tether fork” of Bitcoin, which could also include other upgrades that could damage Bitcoin in the long run.
“Bitcoin consensus is not determined by Bitcoin detention, so while an important business such as Coinbase may support various changes or initiatives, it does not guarantee that protocol changes would be implemented,” Shrader said.
Instead of focusing on the risks associated with USDT on Bitcoin, Shrader makes the opposite.
“What is more interesting is probably the options that unlock where you have the actual arbitrage capacity on Bitcoin itself,” Shrader said.
“Since each knot is able to act in both USDT, and Bitcoin is also able to exchange between them natively on Lightning, you can send Bitcoin out of a Lightning Channel and receive usd in another of your lightning channels, “He added.
“It can be as simple as generating a UST -invoice and paying it with BTC, with the same rebalancing of possessions.”
2025: The year of lightning
In Shrader’s last thoughts from my interview with him, he shared two last important reasons why 2025 will be the year of lightning.
The first is that it is no longer required to use Lightning Bitcoin.
“Until this year, if people or businesses wanted to switch to lightning, they had to have Bitcoin first – and that’s a huge barrier,” Shrader explained. (Shrader added in a response to a follow -up question that it is relatively easy and common to access usd.)
“The only Bitcoin market for payment processing is small. But this year we have removed this barrier and consumers can pay with another asset – USDT. There is already a big market for it, ”he added.
(Shrader also noticed that while USDT is running on lightning rails, Bitcoin is still in favor as USDT is transformed into Bitcoin as it travels over Lightning. He added that “all the bitcoin sloshing around the lightning makes it more rewarding to drive one Lynnode.
What’s more, noted Shrader that Lightning users pay only a small fraction of what they had paid in transaction fees using the traditional financial rails.
“We supply liquidity to less than 0.5%,” SHRADER said.
“As a user of large debit card networks, I pay 4% for all the payment processing, and the money does not show up for days to weeks after the payment has been made,” he added.
“With the lightning, your payment processing fees will fall nearly 10x.”
Given the Shraders Point, it’s hard to imagine that 2025 won’t be a big year for lightning.