Coinbase partners with Lightspark for Bitcoin Lightning payments

Lightspark says the integration on Coinbase will offload more transaction activity away from Bitcoin’s base layer, where fees have increased considerably over the last 12 months.

Coinbase is one step closer to integrating Bitcoin Lightning on its platform amid a new partnership with Lightspark, an enterprise-focused Lightning solution led by former PayPal president David Marcus.

In an April 4 X post, Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong said the integration of the Bitcoin layer-2 network will happen “soon” — which will allow its 108 million user base to leverage potentially faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions.

“Lighting up all Coinbase touchpoints with Lightning” will offload more transaction activity to Bitcoin’s second layer, which will combat the recent rise in fees on Bitcoin’s base layer, Lightspark explained in an April 3 post.

Armstrong confirmed that Coinbase would integrate Bitcoin Lightning last September but didn’t provide further details on how or when that would occur.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase but didn’t receive an immediate response.

Founded in 2022, much of Lightspark’s efforts have revolved around removing complexities that come with implementing and managing a Lightning node to send and receive transactions reliably.

The firm also built Lightspark Predict — an AI-based smart engine that aims to optimize liquidity requirements and routing in real time to maximize transaction success rates and finality times.

According to Bitcoin financial services firm River, Lightning payments success rate is around 99.7%, measured from the 308,000 Lightning transactions requested on its platform last October.

Related: Bitcoin Lightning Network is growing, but 3 major challenges remain

The main reason for failure occurs when no payment route can be found that has enough liquidity to facilitate the transfer, however, River found the average Lightning transaction size was around 44,700 satoshis or $11.84.

The firm estimated between 279,000 and 1.1 million Lightning users were active in September.

Coinbase’s biggest competitor, Binance, integrated Bitcoin Lighting last July.

Lightning has become a popular payment method in Lugano, Switzerland, El Zonte in El Salvador — known as “Bitcoin Beach,” and Utiva in Costa Rica, known as “Bitcoin Jungle.”

However, Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor and some other industry pundits believe Bitcoin is far better off as a store of value technology than a medium of exchange.

Big Questions: How can Bitcoin payments stage a comeback?