In a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, bitcoin rewards app giant Fold confirmed that they have committed to integrating Lightning Network support by the end of 2022.
This is an effort to support the growth of the Lightning Network, a second-layer scaling solution, which is proving to be vital in bitcoin’s journey to becoming a medium of exchange (MoE). Lightning allows for low fee off-chain transactions and near instant micropayment processing, in addition to greater privacy.
With FOLD integrating the Lightning Network, this will bring many new users into the mix. Fold currently has over 500,000 mobile app users with many for whom this will be their first experience using Lightning, after already being exposed to the benefits of bitcoin rewards.
“We are continuing our tradition of moving the space towards Lightning as we did before in the early days with Lightning Pizza. By incentivizing users to use Lightning and opt to receive their rewards in a Lightning wallet, we are bootstrapping LN adoption,” said Fold CEO Will Reeves.
To help make this possible, Fold struck a partnership with BTC payment processor, OpenNode, to help jumpstart this transition over to Lightning. This partnership will allow Fold users to withdraw their bitcoin rewards to their own Lightning wallet, available within the “coming weeks.” The release stated that on-chain transactions will only remain available for a limited time.
“We're really excited to partner with Fold to drive Bitcoin adoption and Lightning Network usage through better payments experiences. OpenNode will power bitcoin payouts for Fold, enabling Fold users to withdraw the bitcoin they earn instantly, and at the lowest cost possible. We look forward to working with Fold to make many more improvements to the way people earn, transfer, and pay with bitcoin,” said OpenNode co-founder and CTO Joao Almeida.
