Well, that was fast. ‘Eclair’ – the first Bitcoin wallet supporting the Lightning Network, has been removed from the Google Play store, mere days after being added.
Not long ago, on April 4th, a French tech company called ACINQ added the first mobile wallet that allowed for Bitcoin transactions via the Lightning Network. The app was available through the Google Play store for Android devices fitted with the operating system version 5.0 and higher.
Several days later, on April 7th, the company tweeted they had lost the signing key for the wallet. This essentially means they are unable to update the app.
We just discovered that we may have lost the signing key allowing us to update the app
Note: key isn’t compromised, just was accidentally deleted and isn’t recoverable
— ACINQ (@acinq_co) April 7, 2018
This effectively prevents us to patch the app in case of bugs, and we already have suspicion of a bug related to unilateral closing, that we wouldn’t be able to fix if it is confirmed
— ACINQ (@acinq_co) April 7, 2018
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The result was that the company removed the app from the Google Play store.
PSA: We have disabled the mainnet Eclair Wallet Android app from Google Play and removed the apk link from our github page.
— ACINQ (@acinq_co) April 7, 2018
So, over the span of only four days, Eclair was added to Google Play and then subsequently removed. Like I said, that was fast (you could even say it was lightning fast).
ACINQ believes a bug compromised the Eclair application, and because they have lost the signing key, the company is unable to resolve the issue.
What now? ACINQ has said that it is working on a new version of the Lightning Network-enabled Bitcoin wallet and will release Eclair 2.0 as soon as they can, republishing it on Google Play.
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