The world's first beer bought via the Lightning Network was bought in this bar in Germany

Room77, a bar in Berlin, has long been a Bitcoin hub in Germany. Here you can buy beer and burgers with Bitcoin. Last weekend, on April 1, the bar successfully opened up a new payment area. Lightning Network (LN) developer Olaoluwa Osuntokun (Roasbeef) helped the bar's owner Joerg Platzer set up a Lightning Network node and accept Lightning Network transactions, exchanging test coins for beer.

Joerg Platzer wrote:

After many years we are finally able to accept Bitcoin payments directly in our bar and restaurant in Berlin (with zero confirmation and without going through Bitpay).

Today we deployed a beta Lightning node and started accepting payments in testcoins. Several customers took this opportunity to travel to the future, and that future looks bright!

To be more precise, the bar owner did not accept test coins to buy beer. Because the test network stipulates that no one can give test coins value, it is impossible to buy beer with test coins. Platzer just gave each customer who successfully sent a lightning network transaction with test coins a free beer. Platzer thanked Olaoluwa Osuntokun for helping to set up the node. Osuntokun may be the first person to buy beer with the lightning network.

Platzer is excited about the experience with the decentralized payment network:

Customers no longer have to wait for transactions to be broadcasted, they can be credited in milliseconds, not even seconds. No need to be wary of double-spending attacks. Even Peter Todd couldn’t let us use RBF (replacement of fees) in the Lightning Network. We also have improved privacy between us and our customers because only we can view transactions on the payment channel.

As a physical merchant that accepts Bitcoin payments, Platzer expressed confidence:

In this world, all merchants want this experience. After all these years, Bitcoin combined with the Lightning Network has finally delivered on its promise: efficiency, speed, irreversibility, and privacy will not be affected no matter how many users there are.

The Lightning Network can connect multiple payment channels for transactions and modification of unconfirmed transactions, similar to how smart contracts eliminate fraud between transacting parties in most cases. The advantage of the Lightning Network payment architecture is that not all transactions need to be processed and stored on the blockchain. Most transactions only need to be propagated among Lightning Network nodes, which can improve the scalability of the network, reduce the burden on on-chain nodes, and support the core architecture of Bitcoin more efficiently. Because the Lightning Network fundamentally changes the scalability rules of Bitcoin in a more ideal way, many developers support the use of this solution to achieve Bitcoin expansion, rather than spending too much effort on on-chain expansion.

Currently, the Lightning Network is still in the alpha testing phase. However, anonymous off-chain lightweight transactions (Bolt) have been built, and its first version has been implemented in line with the Lightning Network. The first version of the Lightning Network used in Room77 this weekend did not interoperate with Bolt, but developers are confident that this problem will be solved in the next few weeks. This test in Room77 proves that the Lightning Network is ready to move out of the experimental stage and demonstrate its application capabilities in the real world. However, to officially release the current version of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin must first activate Segregated Witness (SegWit).