On October 10, Blockstream company announced launch of the Liquid Network. As the world’s first production Bitcoin sidechain, the Liquid Network provides fast, secure, and confidential transactions to address the needs of exchanges, brokers, market makers, and financial institutions around the world.
According to the announcement, the Liquid blockchain went live with the first block generated on September 27, 2018 at 1:29 UTC. 23 of the cryptocurrency industry’s biggest companies participated in the launch as Liquid members, including Altonomy, Atlantic Financial, Bitbank, Bitfinex, Bitmax, BitMEX, Bitso, BTCBOX, BTSE, Buull Exchange, DGroup, Coinone, Crypto Garage, GOPAX (operated by Streami), Korbit, L2B Global, OKCoin, The Rock Trading, SIX Digital Exchange, Unocoin, Xapo, XBTO, and Zaif. Together, these members comprise the Liquid Network, ensuring users’ assets are protected through a geographically diverse network with no single point of failure.
“The success of the launch is the result of coordinated efforts of the Liquid Network’s members and represents just the beginning, with numerous features and applications in the works to expand participation”, – writes the Blockstream team.
These features include GreenAddress wallet integration, an all-new open-source Liquid Wallet client, and plans for third-party hardware wallet support from Ledger and Trezor.