Titan Protocol: Non-custodial Investments on Lightning

Inspiration

As a miner, we were looking for ways to raise money to buy more equipment. We learned about Lightning payment channels and Rainbow channels through some friends. We came up with this idea for how investors could use payment channels as a way to fund startups. The goal of the Titan Protocol is to provide a secure and private way to finance entrepreneurs or get exposure to opportunities.

titan protocol

What it does

Titan Protocol is the first process of its kind that supports non-custodial financing for entrepreneurs using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

For Investors:

Can use their LN wallet to connect and fund payment channels (i.e. invest)
Bank on bitcoin, invest in risky assets while hodling bitcoin
No restrictions on financing
Protections and controls afforded through Lightning/Bitcoin network

For Entrepreneurs:

Sell a stake in any asset (e.g. masternodes)
Make contracts offline, pay online through originators running full nodes
Bank on bitcoin, get liquidity

For Everyone:

No restrictions on financing, privacy
Protections and controls afforded through Lightning/Bitcoin network

Titan protocol

How we built it

We spent A LOT of time learning how to work with LND to do what we wanted with the payment channels. Our protocol was done in Lucidchart. We forked the lndash project to create an "originators dashboard" that makes interfacing with LND easier by adding functionality for creating/paying invoices and opening/funding channels.

Challenges we ran into

Working with the testnet proved too challenging. We could not make the move from regtest to testnet. With more time and energy, it could be configured. We worked to get it set up on bare metal servers which had its own problems. We had challenges managing all the moving parts of the project. We only added some basic functionality to the lndash to make the titan protocol possible. With more time, we could add more function into the application to support more parts of the protocol, specifically calculating the NAV and sending payments and invoices automatically.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to successfully demonstrate our protocol on Regtest and we look forward to getting it setup on the Testnet. We are proud that we were able to get up and running with Lightning Network Daemon so quickly as well. The community provides great resources that made this very easy.

What we learned

We learned how the Bitcoin network works with Lightning. We also learned about rainbow channels and some of the new and innovative design patterns that can be supported on the Lightning network.