Founder: Graham Krizek
Date Founded: October 2020
Location of headquarters: Wichita, Kansas
Number of employees: 17
Website: https://www.voltage.cloud/
Public or private? Private
In 2012, shortly after Graham Krizek discovered Bitcoin and then began contributing to Bitcoin Core and building his own applications on Bitcoin, he noticed a problem that prevented Bitcoin barley lords.
“The problem that I saw was that everyone built everything from scratch – over and over and over again,” Krizek told Bitcoin Magazine. “There was no cloud environment where you could just spin up the Bitcoin infrastructure and be able to start developing against it.”
At that time, however, Krizek did not feel forced to deal with this question. He was still primarily focused on his career as a software engineer outside the Bitcoin room and worked for various startups as well as companies as large as Salesforce while contributing to Bitcoin in his free time.
But something changed inside him as he learned about Lightning Network.
He saw his potential and knew it would be easier to use if it were to be adopted widely.
“When I found Lightning, I said to myself” Okay, this is the next phase of Bitcoin adoption, what really wants to run it to the next level, “Krizek said.
“Then I saw the same pattern happen that I did with Bitcoin. Everyone kept starting from scratch while they built, but the problems were more intense because lightning is so much more complicated, ”he added.
“I was like ‘we need a cloud provider where you can just click on a button and have a lightning nod that is running and maintained for you.’ It can just be there so we can develop applications and build the projects we want to build much easier, much faster. “
And then Krizek came to work in creating such a product.
He shared the initial iteration of it with friends and acquaintances, many of whom began using it so much that the project demanded more of his attention.
“The use grew to a point where I was like” man, I either have to shut it down because I can’t maintain it anymore, or I need to transform this into a business and do it for right, ” said Krizek.
He decided for the latter, and by the end of 2020 he had founded excitement.
How tension works
Tension abstracts away the complexity by using lightning by allowing users to implement a lightning nod and spin up a channel with just a few clicks.
While excitement hosts your knot in its cloud, its public key, comrades, channels, balance and transactions remain all private, as all traffic directed through the node is transferred via Tor.
While your knot is running in the voltage cloud supported by Google Cloud and several other cloud service providers, tension also helps users manage liquidity and offer other types of customer support.
Essentially, the tensions abstract in the difficulty of engaging in lightning while supporting its users in the process. And this does this in the effort to help institutions more easily by consuming lightning. Krizek also mentioned that they have new products and capabilities to help even traditional financing companies with integration.
“The Mission of Tension is to make Bitcoin and Lightning Network accessible to any business on the planet,” Krizek said.
“The lightning is fantastic. It has a lot of really great opportunities, but it can be really hard to wrap your head around it and especially to incorporate it into business operations – especially for companies that may not be in the Bitcoin or crypto area, ”he added.
“We make it easy to use and connect.”
What types of companies use lightning?
In the past year, remarkable companies such as greater crypto exchange Coinbase and Latin America’s largest fintech bank nubank have incorporated lightning into their operations.
Krizek sees this trend with crypto exchanges, neobanks and other financial service platforms aboard Lightning that will continue in the coming year.
“Financial companies will definitely be the biggest movements, because if you can take the value of settlement during a second with zero fees and apply it to a large payment processor making global payments, it is an incredible value addition to their business,” Krizek said .
What’s more, Krisek sees companies outside Bitcoin, Crypto and Finance Space also start using Lightning in 2025, partly because companies like excitement make it easier to do so.
“2025 will be a big year to start branching out of our niche market,” Krizek said.
“Technology has still been a bit rough around the edges of a big company like Walmart to be like, ‘Hi, we want to join this now.’ Even with excitement, we haven’t been perfect all the time making Lightning super easy to use, ”he added.
“I think we’ve been making great progress in the last year, and we’re much more about coming out.”
Another major obstacle for companies that want to adopt lightning is the risk that comes with controlling Bitcoin’s volatility.
But this risk does not exist if companies send Tether (USDT) over lightning instead of Bitcoin, which they will soon be able to do.
Tether (usdt) on the lightning
Krizek is optimistic about USDT coming to Lightning as he believes it will spur growth on the network.
“I think we want a lot of products and solutions around it,” Krizek said.
“It’s not even just that I’m personally excited about it. Much of our customer base is very excited about it. They ask for it directly from us because stableecoins are basically the biggest case in Crypto today, ”he added.
“When you pair stableecoins with settlement fees and very low fees, it’s a huge unlock. With fees on throne, more expensive. People are looking for an alternative. “
(Tron has been the leading blockchain for stableecoin transactions due to how low fees on the network have been historic.)
As far as USDT is about lightning, which potentially poses a security risk to Bitcoin (as I think it does), Krizek doesn’t seem worried.
“It doesn’t worry me at all,” Krizek said.
“I think we have been advanced since the Blocksize War in terms of acquisitions, as I do not think it is so easy for a great institution to force the Bitcoin ecosystem, as some did during Blocksize Wars,” he added, referring to toeth potentially to have a big impact on Bitcoin.
“And it’s even better to integrate something like Tether (USDT) onto Lightning, because it’s a peer-to-peer network-it’s not public consensus. So you have a lot more ability to say ‘Hi, if you don’t want to participate in the USDT transfers, just don’t do it.’ “
Moving forward in a pro-bitcoin regulating environment
US Crypto Czar David Sacks is an investor in excitement (via his venture capital company, Craft Ventures). This indicates that he has some understanding of Lightning Network and the role of Bitcoin as an exchange medium.
So does that mean the United States is on the verge of embracing Bitcoin as such?
According to Krizek, not exactly.
“Everyone screams at the government right now for a strategic Bitcoin reserve that treats Bitcoin as a value of value,” Krizek explained.
“Over time, we will definitely hear more and more about Bitcoin as a means of payment. We just have to get through this strategic reserve conversation first and then say, ‘Okay, what else can we do with this?’ “He added.
The fact that the government paints Bitcoin in any kind of positive light at all is exciting for Krizek. Since 2012, when he first entered the Bitcoin space, the government has either dismissed Bitcoin or been antagonistic to it.
“When I started in Bitcoin, it was completely ignored and the last four years were very bad for companies like us,” Krizek said.
“With this new administration we have definitely seen the tone change. We still work through certain things, but we certainly turn a corner and go in the right direction, ”he added.
“I’m really excited to see where it can go in the coming year. I think it will be positive. “