Cryptocurrency exchange Binance wants to implement the Lightning network. The company is doing this to ease Bitcoin trades, after they were temporarily halted last week. If Binance implements Lightning, it could be an important step for Bitcoin.
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, says on Twitter that it wants to implement Lightning. The company does not provide a time frame for this and does not say how long it will take for the network to be there for all transactions. According to Binance, the company is already working on that. Binance is also changing the level of transaction fees on the network.
The company takes these measures after pausing all transactions for more than two hours last Sunday. Users could no longer withdraw or deposit cryptocurrency or transfer it to each other. This caused panic in the market for a short time, as some users believed that Binance had run into financial problems. Moments later, a second break followed. Binance now says that pause was due to increased activity on the network. According to Coindesk, the number of unconfirmed transactions peaked at around 400,000. As a result, transaction costs also increased considerably.
The Lightning Network has been heralded for years as a great promise for blockchains, especially Bitcoin. The Lightning network is a peer-to-peer payment system that should process transactions much faster, which should also reduce transaction costs. So far, Lightning adoption has been slow, as some major exchanges have not yet implemented the technology. Binance is the largest of these; at the same time, it is also the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Other major exchanges, such as the now bankrupt FTX, also say they are working on the implementation of Lightning, but that has often not happened. If Binance manages to implement Lightning, it could be an important boost for other exchanges to do the same.
