Coinbase Mulling Best Ways to Integrate Lightning Network for Bitcoin

Lightning Network, the popular layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, is set to come to Coinbase, CEO Brian Armstrong said late on Tuesday.

Armstrong’s comments came in response to Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of financial services company Block Inc., who asked why the crypto exchange continues to ignore Bitcoin and Lightning.

“We’re looking into how to best add Lightning. It’s non-trivial, but I think worth doing. I’m all for payments taking off in Bitcoin,” wrote Armstrong.

The Lightning Network was designed to address the scalability issues of the Bitcoin network, enabling users to open payment channels between themselves to conduct off-chain transactions. These off-chain transactions are much faster and more cost-effective compared to traditional on-chain Bitcoin transactions.

The Coinbase chief also hit back at Dorsey’s claims that Coinbase turns a blind eye to the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

“Not sure why you think we’re ignoring Bitcoin—we’ve onboarded more people to Bitcoin than probably any company in the world. Let’s build it together,” he said.

Dorsey welcomes Coinbase collaboration

Dorsey, a vocal Bitcoin supporter, was quick to react to Armostrng’s invitation for collaboration, saying that “putting more of your resources towards your original focus on Bitcoin and layer 2 technologies would be amazing and we’d be happy to partner.”

This is not the first time Armstrong has hinted at integrating Lightning Network in response to users criticizing him for “actively ignoring” the tool.

Back in April, the Coinbase CEO said that “Lightning is great and something we’ll integrate.”

Should the San Francisco-based crypto exchange add support, it would join the ranks of Bitstamp, Kraken, OKX, Bitfinex, and most recently Binance as the largest crypto trading platforms to have integrated the solution.

Block’s pay mobile payment service Cash App is another Bitcoin-friendly platform to have added full support for Lightning Network in October last year.

Coinbase didn’t immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.