Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced that the Lightning Network, a layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, is set to be integrated into the crypto exchange. The move comes in response to Block Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey, who questioned why Coinbase continues to ignore Bitcoin and Lightning.
“We’re looking into how to best add Lightning,” Armstrong said in an Aug. 2 Yahoo Finance report. “It’s non-trivial, but I think worth doing. I’m all for payments taking off in Bitcoin.”
Dorsey, the co-founder of the financial services company Block Inc., has questioned why the cryptocurrency exchange continues to disregard Bitcoin and Lightning, to which Armstrong responded. By allowing users to establish payment channels with one another to carry out off-chain transactions, the Lightning Network was created to address the scalability concerns of the Bitcoin network, Yahoo Finance reported.
Comparing off-chain transactions to conventional on-chain Bitcoin transactions reveals how much faster and cheaper the off-chain transactions are, according to Yahoo Finance.
The CEO of Coinbase also responded to Dorsey's allegations that Coinbase ignores the biggest cryptocurrency in the world. Dorsey, who is an outspoken proponent of Bitcoin, responded quickly to Armostrong's request for a partnership by saying that "putting more of your resources towards your original focus on Bitcoin and layer 2 technologies would be amazing and we'd be happy to partner," Yahoo Finance said.
Armstrong had previously suggested using Lightning Network before in response to users who have criticized him for "actively ignoring" the technology, the report said. The CEO of Coinbase stated back in April that, "Lightning is great and something we'll integrate."
The San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange would become one of the biggest crypto-trading platforms to have implemented the technology, joining Bitstamp, Kraken, OKX, Bitfinex and, most recently, Binance. Cash App, Block's mobile payment service, is another platform that accepts Bitcoin, being added to complete Lightning Network functionality in October of last year, Yahoo Finance reported.
