The Lighting Network is quickly allowing for new Bitcoin-related use cases. Now, a cryptocurrency payments startup has seen over 150 people purchase pizzas during the past week – all using the Lightning Network.



Fold received over 150 completed pizza orders this week



Specifically, this system is the brainchild of cryptocurrency startup Fold. Fold launched a web-based portal for the American pizza restaurant chain Domino’s on Wednesday. Moreover, this service allows pizza-hungry Lightning Network users to make fiat pizza purchases.



In addition to this, however, the platform also serves as a nifty make to garner free publicity for Lightning. As Fold’s product leader, Will Reeves, puts it, ”we [Fold] are trying to make Bitcoin fun again and illustrates that Lightning is at a point where it is mainstream ready.”



Nevertheless, Fold’s plans extend far beyond mere pizzas. The Fold web application is supposedly planning to introduce a Lightning-compatible shopping alternatives over the coming six months.



Fold has reportedly set its eyes on a whole series of other shopping areas – including Whole Foods, Target, Dunkin Donuts, Uber, and Starbucks. Nevertheless, it is worth highlighting that these will not be official partnerships.



Rather, Fold is looking to facilitate consumers’ orders through converting their cryptocurrency payments to traditional fiat payments, and pass this payment onto the different stores. This presents users with a seamless experience, where Fold’s backend handles the conversion between Bitcoin and fiat currency.



This comes as the Lightning Network recently set new records



According to Reeves, the average purchase during the past week was $25. ”Since the average Lightning payment is usually less than $5 so this was able to stretch the Lightning Network to higher value payments for the first time at volume,” Reeves explained.



Moreover, 1ML reports that the overall network set a new record this past week – touting more than 26,588 payment channels, able to facilitate a massive $2.4 million. This represents a 39% increase compared to last month.



Furthermore, Reeves also noted that the experiment had seen orders come in from every US state, noting that they were ”pretty evenly spread across the country”.



However, Reeves noted that the biggest barrier for Fold was that users needed to set up a new Lightning wallet. Although Fold reportedly received a total of around 1,500 orders, only 10% of these were converted – due to people struggling to use Lighting-enabled Bitcoin wallets.



“We’ve learned a lesson that in order to grow the lightning ecosystem we not only need the best products, but the best education as well. We will incorporate that into our plan going forward.”



Image Source: “Flickr”