{"id":4373,"date":"2023-05-18T16:13:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T16:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02bf90a8500025c3"},"modified":"2023-05-18T16:13:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T16:13:01","slug":"building-lightning-network-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/building-lightning-network-companies","title":{"rendered":"Cash App, Lighting Labs, Lightspark Executives Discuss Bringing Bitcoin Payments To The World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a panel discussion at the Bitcoin 2023 conference moderated by CNBC technology reporter MacKenzie Sigalos<\/a>, leaders from some of the biggest businesses building services based on the Lightning Network discussed the opportunities and challenges for Bitcoin\u2019s payments-focused second layer protocol.<\/p>\n

The discussion, titled \u201cBuilding Lightning-Native Companies,\u201d featured Elizabeth Stark<\/a>, the CEO of software development firm Lightning Labs; David Marcus<\/a>, the CEO of Lightspark<\/a>, a firm focused on making Lightning adoption easier and more accessible; and Miles Suter<\/a>, the Bitcoin product lead at Cash App<\/a>, a mobile payment platform that introduced Lighting payments to its more than 40 million users in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We’ve really reached the point right now where Lightning is maturing and we’re seeing more and more adoption,\u201d Stark said, summarizing the momentum she has seen since she co-founded Lightning Labs in 2016. \u201cPeople are adopting the network because it is solving real problems for them.”<\/p>\n

By allowing peers to create closed payment channels between themselves, which are only settled on the underlying Bitcoin blockchain when closed, the Lightning Network enables bitcoin payments that can take place in seconds while still benefiting from the security of Bitcoin\u2019s base ledger<\/a>. But as this second layer is relatively young<\/a>, adoption represents just a fraction<\/a> of the larger digital payments volume across the world.<\/p>\n

The panelists highlighted the importance of developing products and services that make Lightning easier to use and solve some of its outstanding issues, like the network\u2019s relatively-low liquidity and limited number of nodes.<\/p>\n

\u201cA channel-based payment network is still very complicated,\u201d Sigalos pointed out. \u201cThere\u2019s not a ton of liquidity sitting on the nodes right now\u201d for instance.<\/p>\n

In response, Suter noted that many of the challenges in making Lightning more accessible derive from Bitcoin\u2019s most important qualities.<\/p>\n

“It’s hard to develop on Bitcoin,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe see that everyday… but it’s an intentional decision because we believe that’s what allows it to maintain a very minimal attack surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the panelists all agreed that when there are significant problems for Lightning to solve, like in countries where it can help people access the dollar or enable more efficient cross-border transactions, adoption is evident. As more of those problems emerge and companies like these continue to build products and services on top of Lightning, they expect adoption to accelerate.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking it easy will drive more adoption,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cBetween now and next year when we gather again, we\u2019ll be in a much better place when it comes to Lightning adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a panel discussion at Bitcoin 2023, leaders from some of the largest Bitcoin-focused companies discussed building on the Lightning Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2705,"featured_media":4374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1477,750,1252,460,327,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-4373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bitcoin-2023","9":"tag-cash-app","10":"tag-lightning-labs","11":"tag-lightning-network","12":"tag-lightspark","13":"tag-news"},"author_data":{"id":2705,"name":"Peter Chawaga","nicename":"peter-chawaga","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/peterc-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/fwbgj1mwaaqn5h9.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2705"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}