The new venture c= founded by Block’s (formerly, Square) TBD division aims to expand the reach of the Bitcoin Lightning Network through added liquidity and routing services
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TBD – a division of Jack Dorsey’s fintech Block – launched a new venture named c= (c equals) with the goal to improve the Bitcoin Lightning Network through routing services and liquidity tools.
The Lightning Network (LN) is a layer 2 peer-to-peer payment network built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. The utility of LN is that it speeds up transactions among participating nodes and offers a solution to Bitcoin scalability issues, as payments technically occur off-chain. This way, the network improves Bitcoin operations, making it easier to adopt the crypto ecosystem.
At the same time, the L2 protocol is still not perfect when it comes to liquidity and speed. Therefore, c= is partnering with the most popular crypto wallets, businesses and lightning nodes to enable instant bitcoin payments.
The new set of tools and services has something to offer for all system participants:
- wallet users – fast, reliable, and low-cost lightning payments super-charged by machine learning;
- businesses – enterprise-grade payments via managed channels with sufficient liquidity and reliable routing;
- Lightning node operators – new sources of routing volume and customers served via c= LSP services.
The capacity of Bitcoin Lightning Network recently surpassed an all-time high of 5,000 Bitcoin. Since the start of 2023, over 2,000 new channels have been added to the network. It is attributed to the growth of real-world use cases, such as LN-based remittance service in Africa, as well as the rise of Bitcoin-based applications like nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
