OKEx Rolls Out Bitcoin Lightning Support for Scalable Payments

Crypto exchange giant OKEx is the latest to integrate Bitcoin (BTC) scaling solution — Lightning Network (LN) — on its platform. The move comes following a significant resurgence in LN interest especially as BTC is experiencing massive adoption across the globe.

OKEx Announces Lightning Network Support

OKEx announced the news of the LN integration via a press release issued on Tuesday (Feb. 2, 2021). According to the press statement, the actual Lightning Network deployment will happen before the end of the Summer.

For OKEx, adopting LN will boost user experience on the exchange with the accompanying faster and cheaper transactions offer by the Layer-2 (L2) Bitcoin solution. The platform also revealed that the move was in line with its efforts to contribute its quota to the advancement of BTC payment technology across the globe.

LN is the often-touted response for critics who say Bitcoin payments cannot be achieved at scale especially for microtransactions like buying coffee. The system uses a network of nodes that handle transactions off-chain before relaying same to the main blockchain.

Commenting on the planned LN integration, OKEX CEO Jay Hao remarked:

“OKEx is extremely proud to be one of the first major exchanges to integrate the Lightning Network. We are always looking for new ways of decreasing user transaction fees and times. By integrating Layer 2 payment protocols like the Lightning Network, we can offer more competitive products to our users and, at the same time, openly demonstrate our support for the Bitcoin network by increasing the number of participant nodes in the Lightning Network.”

LN is also seen as a solution to the issue of high fees that can occur during periods of network congestion. OKEx even alluded to this issue their communique bemoaning the prevalence of transaction costs as high as $10 on some occasions.

For Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark, OKEx’s LN adoption is a major milestone for Lightning Network development as the presence of such a major crypto exchange lends credence to the viability of the L2 network. According to CoinMarketCap data, OKEx is ranked 14th in terms of daily exchange volume which is north of $8 billion on both the spot and derivatives marketplaces as of the time of writing this article.

OKEx adopting LN is the latest major Lightning Network-related news to emerge in the last few weeks. As previously reported by BTCManager, U.S. payment API platform Strike partnered with Bittrex to upscale LN capabilities to over 200 countries back in January.

LN adoption sentiment has been on the rise since November following the positive price action trajectory for Bitcoin. Before then, critics had pointed to the overwhelming adoption of Bitcoin on the Ethereum (ETH) as a repudiation of the sentiments espoused by LN proponents.