Bitcoin Daily: Monerium Partners With Algorand To Enable Blockchain Transactions; Square To Build Lightning Development Kit To Enhance Bitcoin Wallets

Monerium, a startup based in Iceland that has a European Economic Area (EEA) e-money license, has teamed up with Algorand, a blockchain with a highly scalable consensus algorithm, according to a report Tuesday (Jan. 21) by Coindesk.

The deal was announced on Tuesday (Jan. 21), and the two companies are going to work together to develop “real-world use cases that are enabled by advanced blockchain technology” that will use Monerium’s “programmable” digital money, according to W. Sean Ford, Algorand’s chief operating officer.

Monerium lets its customers develop their financial services based on the blockchain, including cross-border settlements using fiat currency. Monerium stores fiat currency deposits for clients and releases them in a digital form on a blockchain.

“Algorand incorporates key features for many mainstream use-cases, including stateless smart contracts and scaleable proof-of-stake consensus. The Algorand leadership has taken a pragmatic and deliberate approach in designing a blockchain for mainstream applications while staying close to the ethos of the open-source community,” said Sveinn Valfells, co-founder and CEO of Monerium. “Supporting new blockchains with mainstream relevance is a priority for Monerium.”

In other bitcoin news, Square Crypto has announced that it’s building a Lightning Development Kit (LDK) that will allow developers of both wallets and applications to provide a better way to make custom experiences.

“For bitcoin to become a widely used global currency — one that can’t be stopped, tampered with, or rigged in anyone’s favor — improvements to bitcoin’s UX, security, privacy, and scaling are required,” the company said. “In open-source development, developers usually choose their own projects. Yet, because we are a consolidated team of open-source developers, we are in a strong position to coordinate on major projects that individuals may not have the time or resources to tackle.”

The company said that the LDK would make it easier to add capabilities to bitcoin wallets and get rid of the need to have a separate wallet for Lightning. It will also support multi-device and multi-application access to one wallet, and it will “make UX/security/privacy tradeoffs such as external transaction signing and customizing their state backup to a cloud service.”