Jack Dorsey, CEO at Block, announced a new Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) service provider called “C=.” According to the official announcement, this new service is part of the TBD initiative, which aims to create a set of BTC-based tools to give users more control over their finances.
Hey LN 👋
We are here https://t.co/NzAKpVqgDz
— c = (@c_equals) March 2, 2023
The Lightning Network is a second layer payment solution that allows users to send and receive BTC “off-chain.” The solution speeds up transactions on this blockchain and avoids long waiting times to validate transactions on the network.
New Project TBD And Bitcoin As The Future Of Payment
According to the announcement, C= will build infrastructure to allow people to use Bitcoin’s second layer solution and support the “future of payments.” New service providers identify the lack of liquidity in LN as a major issue for adoption and the future.
Via his official Twitter handle, he said:
Liquidity from trusted nodes can be hard to come by when you need it, making payments difficult. We want to make it easy and reliable for you to send and receive payments via Lightning. We’ve been working behind the scenes with Spiral cat to create routing nodes that will make Lightning easier and more reliable for businesses and people transacting on the network.
The new service provider is looking for partners from different sectors with different needs to work with payment infrastructure based on LN. In the long term, C= wants to bring billions of users to the BTC ecosystem and increase the current payment rails.
BTC Lightning On A Bull Rull
The Bitcoin Lightning Network has grown rapidly over the past two years. This second layer payment solution is seeing a critical adoption rate, despite the downward trend of the crypto market.
As Bitcoinist reported in October last year, the research company Messari recorded an exponential increase in the public capacity of LN. In other words, there is more liquidity in the payment solution, which allows more people to send payments.
The chart below shows that LN capacity has continued to grow, despite BTC’s price performance, since November 2018. The crypto market also experienced a broad market downtrend during that time. Unlike the new sector, the Lightning network continues to rise.
Cover image from Unsplash, graphics from Tradingview.