Company Name: Alby
Founders: Michael Bumann, Moritz Kaminski and René Aaron
Date Founded: Open-source project founded in December 2020 / Company founded in March 2022
Location of Headquarters: Fully remote
Amount of Bitcoin Held in Treasury: N/A
Number of Employees: 10
Website: https://getalby.com/
Public or Private? Private
Michael Bumann wants to make it simpler for people to send value across the internet.
This is why he created Alby — an open-source initiative-turned-company best known for its browser extension wallet app, which enables users to send and receive sats via the Lightning Network.
Bumann, a soft-spoken and introspective German web developer with decades of experience in his field, believes that bitcoin should be able to move as freely as information does on the internet. To accomplish this, he’d like to see Lightning integrated into all corners of the web.
“The mission is to make Lightning available within web applications,” Bumann told Bitcoin Magazine. “We want to make this accessible — to have this real deep integration, a very seamless thing in which payments are no longer blocking user experiences.”
Bumann and the team at Alby are currently succeeding in their mission, as Alby is one of the easiest Lightning wallets to both set up and use and has become a go to for creators around the world.
What many don’t know about Alby, though, is that its much more than just a Lightning Wallet.
What is Alby?
“Alby initially was the browser extension [wallet],” said Bumann of the Alby wallet, which lets users a create a convenient LNURL address (e.g., yourname@getalby.com) that they can use for sending and receiving bitcoin over Lightning.
“The goal was to have the browser talk to the Alby extension, which then talks to a node on the Lightning Network. Back then we had mainly LND (an implementation of a Lightning node) and talking to LND from a browser was and still is actually super complicated,” he added.
After some time, Bumann and his team at Alby created a wallet API, which can be used to integrate Lightning payments into any application. Think integrating Lightning payments into your favorite podcasting app to help you get paid as a podcaster.
Alby also provides its users with an LNDHub, which allows them to plug in and manage multiple Lightning accounts via one interface and node.
Many use the Alby browser extension wallet as a custodial wallet, but users can also use it in a non-custodial fashion with Alby Hub, which enables users to connect to Alby via their own node or pay a small fee to have Alby run a node for them.
“Ideally, we move in a direction where it’s easy enough for people to run their own nodes and their own wallets,” said Bumann. “Anything in between is an intermediary step.”
Alby has something for everyone from new users to the most advanced, which is part of the reason why it’s gained so much traction in just two and a half years.
On that note, Alby has grown faster than even Bumann and his team…
Read More: Alby: A Hub For The Bitcoin And Lightning Economy