Lightning Labs Secures $10 Million In Funding

Written by

Written on Feb 6, 2020

Reading time 2 minutes

Lightning Labs has successfully raised $10 million in Series A funding round
The company launched its first financial product, Lightning Loop, which allows users to move their funds between the Lightning Network and Bitcoin blockchain
Amongst other things, funds will be used to hire more developers

Lightning Network developer Lightning Labs has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round. Furthermore, the bitcoin startup also announced the beta launch of Lightning Loop, the company’s first financial product.

Last year, Lightning Labs was working on Lightning Network implementation software called the Lightning Network Daemon. Now, the company is looking to expand its client base through the Lightning Loop service.

“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,” said Lightning Labs Chief Executive Elizabeth Stark.

Lightning Loop is a non-custodial service that allows users to rebalance their channels via on-chain payments on the Lightning Network. Lightning Loop is a service built on the bitcoin blockchain which enables the monetizing of the layer-two technology.

Nowadays, the highest amount of bitcoin users that can send and receive payments through Lightning channels is decided by the amount of bitcoin they store into the channel when first opening it. In order to transfer a higher amount of bitcoin, users need to set up a new channel.

However, Lightning Labs have designed Submarine Swaps, a method to allow atomic on-chain to off-chain swaps. Submarine Swaps lets users move bitcoin from channels to the bitcoin blockchain to clear the space and receive more BTC. It also allows users to transfer on-chain bitcoin into their channels from wallets or exchanges.

“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,” said Stark.

In order to launch other monetized financial products which are currently in the development stage, the San Francisco-based company plans to invest funds in hiring new developers, a project manager, and a business strategist.

At this moment Lightning Labs has 16 employees, 5 more than a year ago, and plans to hire 6 more this year.