Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the exchange has decided to integrate the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) after several months of questioning by the crypto community.
In a Sept. 13 post on X (formerly Twitter), Armstrong stated that the exchange was willing to do its part in enabling faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions because the flagship digital asset was the most important cryptocurrency in the industry.
The LN is the most popular “layer 2” payment protocol built on Bitcoin. This solution facilitates quicker and more cost-effective transactions among network nodes. Its primary goal is to address the scalability challenges faced by BTC, ultimately enhancing user satisfaction and potentially spurring increased usage of the blockchain network.
Armstrong did not provide a definite timeline on when the platform would complete this integration, saying, “[BTC lightning network] will take some time to integrate, so please be patient.”
Meanwhile, Viktor Bunin, the exchange’s protocol specialist at Coinbase Cloud, is leading the integration effort.
In an Aug. 2 post, Bunin invited the community to contact him with input on various integration aspects, including support, user experience enhancements, open source tools, service providers, and addressing potential edge cases. This suggests that Coinbase is actively engaging with its user base to ensure a robust and user-friendly Lightning Network integration.
Coinbase has yet to respond to CryptoSlate’s request for additional commentary as of press time.
Coinbase has drawn intense criticism from the crypto community due to its limited access to the scaling solution. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey publicly questioned why the exchange neglected this solution while pursuing other crypto payment options.
In response, Armstrong consistently maintained that the platform was actively working towards integrating the BTC layer two scaling solution, although he always refrained from specifying a concrete timeline for this integration.
