CoinGate, a bitcoin payment processor, has announced that it has launched Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) payments on its platform. This latest development would see 4,000 of its merchants have the option to accept Lightning payments.

CoinGate to give merchants options

Lithuanian blockchain payment processor CoinGate, which was established four years, added that merchants can keep the funds in bitcoin or the company will help convert the funds to Euros or U.S. dollars for customers who want to avoid dealing with the volatility of Bitcoin.

In its blog post, CoinGate announced that it now offers Lighting Network payment processing. The LN is a second-layer solution that works on top of Bitcoin to make payments instant and very cheap.

Dmitrijus Borisenka, CoinGate CEO and co-founder stated that Lightning Network fits exactly in our vision of what Bitcoin should be in the future. He added that the network is still in its early days, thus it is more suited to advanced users and Bitcoin enthusiasts.

CoinGate had earlier expressed support for Lightning Network, stating that they have a strong belief that this technology will have a huge positive impact on Bitcoin as a whole.

Two months ago, the company announced via another blog post that it had launched a Lightning Network pilot involving around 100 merchants. This pilot received a lot of positive feedback and encouraged CoinGate to increase its scope.

They have since then expanded to now cater for the 4,000 merchants registered on their platform.

CoinGate’s LN to boost Bitcoin adoption

The lightning network is regarded by many as the solution to Bitcoin’s scalability problem, Lightning promises faster transactions and lowers fees.

Lightning Network works like an off-chain layer to the Bitcoin blockchain which enables some transactions to be made even before the underlying general chain or ledger is updated.

As a whole, this process helps boost the transaction speed and improves the scalability.

The launching of the Lightning Network payment by CoinGate is expected to go a long way in improving the use of Bitcoin by both consumers and merchants.

Bitcoin would benefit from this as the increased use will lead to an increase in trading volume and subsequently, a positive impact on the market value of the cryptocurrency.

Asides solving the scalability problem, LN also significantly reduces transaction fees. This is another incentive that could persuade merchants and consumers to make use of Bitcoin as a means of payment.

Lighting network continues to grow

The impact of LN on Bitcoin’s network is not exaggerated. Over the past one month, Bitcoin blockchain’s capacity has increased by 5% while the node count has surged by 10%. The overall channel count has also risen by 6%.

With the help of LN, the network capacity has increased massively, from 3 BTC to the current 114.80 BTC over the past six months. With CoinGate now joining the fray, the network’s capacity will most likely cross the 150 BTC threshold in no time.