Digital asset firm Kraken is pleased to confirm its support for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, which is “now live for all clients.”
Traders now have “an instant and inexpensive way to move Bitcoin on and off the platform.”
Going on to explain why you may use Lightning, Kraken noted:
“While regular BTC transactions are limited by block times and can face high transaction fees, Lightning Network enables instant settlement and lower fees when you transfer BTC to or from your Kraken account.”
The Lightning Network can “process millions of transactions per second thanks to its system of payment channels that are opened and closed on the Bitcoin blockchain.”
Although open, these channels “do not publish intermediate transactions to the blockchain, holding them ‘off-chain’ to enable instant and efficient value transfer.” These off-chain channels “remain secured by the Bitcoin blockchain’s multisig and timelocking features.”
As noted in a blog post, the Lightning ecosystem is “quickly evolving and there are numerous open-source and free Lightning wallet solutions.” For instance, BTCPay Server “enables Lightning payments for merchants, greatly improving the bitcoin checkout flow.”
For consumers, Breez, Phoenix and Muun “bring Lightning to mobile with a modern user experience.”
If you want to find out more about the Lightning Network (LN), then you may check out “What is the Lightning Network? at Kraken’s Learn Center.”
If you want to deposit Bitcoin on Lightning, then you would navigate to Funding > Deposit and select Bitcoin (BTC). Then, select Lightning Network, enter the amount of satoshis “you want to deposit.”
Then “hit Generate deposit request, “copy and paste the generated invoice into your Lightning wallet, or scan the QR code.” After completing this step, you can send the payment.
Please note that a satoshi is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin (so 1 sat = 0.00000001 BTC).
In another recent update, Kraken confirmed that it now supports trading with Alchemix (ALCX), Barnbridge (BOND), Jasmy (JASMY), Mask Network (MASK), Render (RNDR), Spell Token (SPELL), Tribe (TRIBE) and Universal Market Access (UMA).