New nodes and channels on the Lightning Network have increased by 23.68% and 22.24%, respectively over the last 24 hours.
The surge in activity follows Twitter’s announcement on Thursday that it had added support for Bitcoin-based payment features, including Lightning wallets.
Lightning Network is a second-layer scaling solution aimed at speeding up Bitcoin transactions and reducing fees, while also enhancing user privacy. The protocol focuses on micropayments, opening up a variety of novel use cases, such as new revenue models for content creators or tipping in social media.
Tipping is also what Twitter targets with the new feature, which saw the integration of Strike, a Bitcoin payment app built atop the layer-2 network.
I just published Announcing the Strike API
Today, @Twitter enables free, instant, global payments for their users with their integration of the Strike API.
"It's very exciting to witness the latest adoption of the Lightning Network in the real world. More and more pieces of the puzzle are coming together,” Jeff Gallas, CEO and founder of Fulmo, a Berlin-based Lightning Network startup, told Decrypt.
He went on to say that Lightning Network support on Twitter enables people to send payments to anyone in the world.
“Instantly, at very low cost, worldwide. The power of open-source monetary innovation," said Gallas.
Twitter will begin rolling out Bitcoin-based payment features starting on Thursday, including support for Lightning wallets, as part of a larger plan to support creators on its platforms.
The company announced the features on a call with reporters, noting that "Bitcoin operates without global barriers" and declaring that its crypto initiatives will help it participate in the "evolving decentralized news."
Twitter uses will be given two options to employ Bitcoin tips. The first is via a menu of p...
The Lightning Network is still considered a relatively young and experimental technology. Still, it saw some major developments in recent weeks and months.
One such example is the global peer-to-peer crypto exchange Paxful integrating the technology earlier this month.
Another project that added Lightning Network support is Substack, a popular online platform that allows writers to set up their own subscription-based newsletters. Last month, Substack announced that it would use the protocol to accept Bitcoin for payments for crypto-related publications.
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