Coinbase Partners with Lightspark for Bitcoin Lightning Payments

• Coinbase Exchange is set to integrate the Lightning Network through Lightspark.
• This brings a formal integration of the solution after months since it was first teased.

Coinbase, one of the world’s leading crypto exchanges has formed a strategic partnership with Lightspark in a move towards embracing Bitcoin lightning payments. The collaboration promises to be a game-changer for Coinbase with potentially faster and cheaper Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.

What Coinbase Stands to Benefit from Lightspark

Announcing the partnership on the X platform, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase hinted that the integration is expected to begin soon and it will open the door for more collaborations between the firms in the future. In September, Armstrong confirmed that Coinbase would integrate Lightning Network but provided no further details on how or when it would occur.

Has been great working with @lightspark on our Lightning integration which should be launching soon 🙏 https://t.co/KP2CRWZBRw

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) April 3, 2024

As highlighted in a post on Wednesday, the integration will allow Coinbase to utilize Lightspark’s remote-key signing technology, with Coinbase holding the Lightning signing keys and Lightspark hosting the Lightning node. Consequently, Coinbase stands to benefit from a scalable, dependable, and fully optimized node architecture that offers a wide range of functions through a simple and intuitive interface. 

Furthermore, Coinbase’s product, engineering, and operations teams can focus on providing the greatest end-to-end user experiences without being distracted by the difficulties of managing and optimizing a large-scale Lightning implementation.

Shan Aggarwal, VP of Corporate & Business Development. Coinbase highlights the partnership’s importance, stating that the partnership with Lightspark will push to “eliminate payment barriers and enable faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions through support for the Bitcoin Lightning Network.”

For Lightspark, the partnership is beneficial to the network as it would increase its utilization. This partnership goal can be easily achievable because it comes at a critical time, considering the rising cost of Bitcoin and Bitcoin L1 fees.

In general, the Lightspark integration hopes to pave the way for additional payment use cases soon by allowing more liquidity to be transferred into and out of Bitcoin from fiat and cryptocurrencies. Reiterating Crypto News Flash’s earlier reports, third parties are not required to facilitate transactions on the Lightning Network. The two-channel members exchange direct payments.

Lightspark’s Relevance in Blockchain Technology

Lightspark, founded in 2022, has focused much of its efforts on eliminating the complexity associated with establishing and managing a Lightning node to successfully send and receive payments.

The Lightning Network can be integrated seamlessly and simply with the help of Lightspark SDKs, APIs, and developer tools. In addition, Lightspark Predict, an AI-powered smart engine, optimizes liquidity requirements and routing in real time to achieve the highest transaction success rates and finality times throughout the network.

Lightning Network has become a popular payment option in many Jurisdictions including Lugano, Switzerland, El Zonte, El Salvador, also known as “Bitcoin Beach.” Last year, Michael Saylor, co-founder of business analytics software firm MicroStrategy reportedly incorporated Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into his workplace email address. 

The integration requires developers to provide an internet identity or email address to substitute normal Lightning invoices or payment requests, as Crypto News Flash earlier indicated.