Lightning Labs to Simplify Bitcoin Payments with Fresh $10M Funding
Lightning Labs, a Bitcoin payments startup has raised $10 million in Series A funding to promote the development of the Lightning payments technology and scale its developer ecosystem. The startup has also launched its first paid product, Lightning Loop to facilitate a more efficient transfer of payments on the Lightning network, according to a blog post on February 5, 2020.
Lightning Labs $10 Million Series A Warchest
Per the publication, Lightning Labs has raised $10 million in Series A funding to promote the development of the Lightning payments technology and scale its developer ecosystem.
According to the team, this major milestone is in accordance with its goal to offer instant bitcoin transactions to millions of people.
Also, Lightning Labs has launched the beta version of its first paid product, Lighting Loop.
Lighting Loop allows startups, node operators, and end-users to send and receive payments over the Lightning Network more efficiently, per the team.
In line with that, the product enables users to transfer funds between the bitcoin blockchain and Lightning in a non-custodial manner.
“Loop opens up a world of Lightning-native financial products, and this is the first of several “blue sky” Lightning products we’re building,” the team said.
Lightning Network Daemon Gaining Massive Adoption
Furthermore, the team revealed that over 30 startups have integrated Lightning Network Daemon (LND), open-source software for the Bitcoin mainnet and Lightning Labs has also reached a milestone where over 4,000 developers and testers contribute to the growth of the Lighting ecosystem.
Likewise, there has been a heightened increase in the number of startups adopting Lighting or building applications with use cases for it.
Specifically, startups that have launched an application for Lighting include Bitrefill, Fold, OpenNode, and Moon.
Similarly, companies that enable individuals to earn while using Lighting include Stak, Tippin, and Bottlepay.
Lighting Network, on the other hand, is a second layer payment protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain that enables payments to be sent faster.
Two or more individuals can transact using the Lighting Network by creating a payment channel, which can be left open for days or weeks until the transaction is complete.
In May 2019, a year after its launch, the Lighting Network surpassed a network capacity of 1,000 BTC.
BTCManager reported on July 5, 2019, that Lightning Labs has launched a Lightning Mobile App for iOS & Android devices.
Earlier in January 2020, reports emerged that Square Crypto is developing a Lightning Development Kit (LDK) to enable wallet developers to give users custom experiences.
