“Bitcoin is at the intersection of so many different areas — everything from technology, computer science, law, you look at the political angle, you look at the community angle, sociology, cultural angles, global angles, macro, finance. It’s just at the center of so many of the areas of our world today.”

Biography:

Elizabeth Stark is a legal scholar, computer scientist and blockchain entrepreneur. She taught courses on peer-to-peer technology, privacy and related subjects at Stanford and Yale, where she focused on the intersection of politics and technology. 

In 2016, Stark co-founded Lightning Labs, developer of the Lightning Network. The network is a layer-2 scaling solution that aims to allow for up to 1 million Bitcoin transactions per second. Stark continues to serve as CEO of the company. She is also a fellow at Coin Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates for pro-crypto public policy.

Stark’s 2022:

In 2022, Stark saw the Lightning Network reach new heights. It became available as a deposit and withdrawal method for the apps Cash App and Kraken. Shortly afterward, Lightning Labs raised over $70 million from investors to develop the Taro protocol — a piece of software to allow stablecoins to be sent across the network. An alpha version of Taro was released in September.

Another milestone for Lightning was reached when the number of BTC locked in the network’s payment channels (often called its “capacity”) surpassed 4,000 in June 2022. In October, the 5,000 BTC mark was also reached. Payments provider Strike made Lightning transactions available to some Shopify stores in 2022 as well. In December, Strike launched Bitnob, a Kenya-based Bitcoin savings platform and remittance service that utilizes the Lightning Network for transfers across borders

Over the year, Stark also sought to evangelize for crypto adoption. She appeared at the Bitcoin 2022 conference, where she hosted a discussion called “The Youngest Bitcoin Coders” that included teenage Bitcoin coders Ishaana Misra and Autumn Domingo. At MIT Bitcoin Expo 2022, she participated in a “fireside chat,” where she explained how the Lightning Network works and how it allows Bitcoin to scale. At the Africa Bitcoin Conference, Stark was interviewed by YouTuber Sama Time, discussing Bitcoin’s broader role in the world.

Stark’s 2023:

Stark’s Lightning Labs is likely to continue to make strides in 2023. Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has already announced that it will offer software-as-a-service products on the network sometime in 2023. In January, the network got its first Bitcoin ATM integration via a location in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Official data for transaction counts on the network are hard to come by, but its advocates seem to agree that Lightning is still in an experimental phase. Still, with legions of Bitcoin fans looking for a scaling option that can work with their favorite coin, Stark is sure to find new adherents to her cause in the new year.