Elizabeth Stark is a Brooklyn-born girl who has made a huge impact on the crypto world as an influencer.
She is a multifaceted person who has achieved very high professional success. She completed her Law degree from the University of Harvard.
In the initial days, she worked as an academician. Life charted a different path for her as she was more interested in technology.
Stark co-founded Lighting Labs which “scale blockchains” to expedite payment processes in the crypto ecosystem.
Scalability is the ability of a Blockchain system, to record data, process transactions, and reach consensus faster as more users are added to the network.
The Lightning Network enables users to interact quickly and affordably while doing transactions. The goal of Lightning Networks is to be a Bitcoin payment network and increase the scalability and privacy of Bitcoin.
About lightning Network
Lightning Network is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain leveraging a layer 2 payment solution. Lightning network has a history of more than six years and has seen a great increase in products and the number of users in this period.
Lightning Network aims to make Bitcoin transactions faster and cheaper by offloading some of the transaction processing from the main blockchain network.
One of the biggest challenges in the Bitcoin ecosystem was scaling, making transaction processes more efficient and faster.
Usually, multiple nodes are used to process information to verify and confirm transactions. It can be slow and may consume a lot of resources. Her company deployed technologies that enable to confirm transactions with fewer modes.
In this system, a pair of nodes manage the transactions by linking senders and receivers through payment channels. The transaction fees are also reasonable.
Lightning network has integrated into Nostr protocol which allows users to send satoshis to each other which has enhanced its popularity.
Custodial and non-custodial LN wallets have proliferated during this period. Formal integration in countries outside the United States is a big plus.
Moreover, it is growing as a peer-to-peer means of payment across various regions.
Achievements
Elizabeth Stark is also a fellow at Coin Center, a research center that advocates for positive government policies related to cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
She has put commendable effort into bringing about policies that are beneficial to the ecosystem’s growth. As a mentor for Thiel Fellowship, she supports school dropouts to pursue their projects of interest with her guidance and financial support.
She is also a visiting scholar at the Yales Information Society project, where she teaches P2P technology and open-source protocols.
She has proved herself during the tough years for cryptocurrency prices and a difficult period for blockchain companies.
Challenges
Running a Lightning node is complex and not so user-friendly at present even though things are improving.
Even today some find it difficult to keep their nodes well connected and up to date with relevant nodes. Custodial Lighting wallets like Wallet of Satoshi are popular among Bitcoin users.
However, it is not recommended to store large amounts of money in custodial wallets as it poses privacy and security risks.
Few exchanges have adopted the Lightning network till now even though the future looks bright.
Stark’s Advice
Elizabeth Stark has some worries about the challenges that the Bitcoin ecosystem faces due to several reasons. She is very worried about the pushback for cryptocurrency from established players.
According to her “When you change how money is created and valued, there is going to be major pushback,” This means that, the traditional banking ecosystem which has a monopoly on creating money will try to sabotage any efforts that could weaken their monopoly.
She is also very critical of the new wave of Initial coin offerings(ICOs), sometimes by unscrupulous startups that secure fundraising from the market with the intent of fleecing unsophisticated buyers.
According to her ninety-five percent of coins that are in the market right now may probably fail. She is very supportive of experimentation and innovation, but according to her, it must be more balanced to minimize customer harm and bring a bad name to the cryptocurrency industry. She is for financial sovereignty for the investors where the keys available to all
Final Thoughts
Elizabeth Stark’s life journey is very inspiring. Even though she is not a developer herself she has put her mark in the crypto world for her contribution to making processes more efficient and faster.
