Lightning Labs, a development team of Lightning Network accumulated Series A funding of about $10 million in participation with RRE Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and others directed by Craft Ventures.

On Wednesday, a startup based in San Francisco declared the beta release of the first financial product of the firm – Lightning Loop. For many years in the past, the development of (Lightning Network Daemon) Lightning Network implementation software has remained a center of activity for the Lightning Labs. Further, Lightning Lab is acquiring to spread its user base with the Lightning Loop feature.  

“We are building a real business with real customers and real revenue, and we want to solve real problems for real users… We will be using the fund to hire more talent on the development and business side.” - stated  Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark.

Working of the Lightning Loop

Alpha, a non-custodial service Lightning Loop, was first launched in March 2019 and provided the on-and-off ramp for users for transferring funds in Lightning Network.

Moreover, during the interaction of users through Lightning channels, the maximum quantity of Bitcoin for sending and receiving is predetermined by the number of bitcoin users deposit into the channel when they first set it up.

Besides, Submarine Swaps is a technique introduced by the Lightning Labs for enabling atomic on-chain to off-chain swaps. Lightning Loop gives access to users for moving Bitcoin from Lightning channels into the Bitcoin blockchain to free up space of channel for receiving more funds. Also, users can replenish their channels with on-chain bitcoin from exchanges or wallets.

The CEO Lightning Labs further stated:

“There is this liquidity element to Lightning, where you have to have funds to be able to send or receive in the right place, so Loop is helping startups and companies to efficiently allocate their funds to Lighting.”

Although Lightning Loop is still in its early phase but has attracted more adopters, including Fold, an e-commerce startup. Besides, according to a press release, about 30 startups have integrated software solutions of Lightning Labs.

Further, the CEO of Fold, an e-commerce startup, expressed his views: 

“Services like Loop are essential to the growth of the Lightning Network, enabling builders to focus on bringing great lightning experiences to life without being slowed by the complexities of lightning node management.” 

In addition, there are more products to come, and Lightning Loop is not the only financial product built on the Lightning Network. Also, Zap, a Lightning Network wallet provider, last week introduced Strick, a smartphone application that gives access to users for buying Bitcoin with the debit or credit cards.

OpenNode is another Lightning Network startups that aim at providing an API for users to make online purchases possible. Recently, famous crypto firms such as BitMEX, Bistamp, and Bitfinex have shown their interest in Lightening.

Image Source - Flickr