Binance Incorporates Lightning Network Withdrawals and Deposits

The Lightning Network, a BTC scaling layer, has been fully integrated on Binance’s platform, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange by volume traded. Users can now use the network to carry out bitcoin deposits and withdrawals and benefit from lower fees.

Recently, Lightning Network, a scalability layer for the Bitcoin blockchain, was fully integrated by Binance. On July 17, the exchange announced the addition of these features, stating that customers may now deposit and withdraw Bitcoin from Binance utilizing this new method.

Since there is no need to wait for transactions as there is when utilizing Bitcoin on its base layer, the Lightning Network enables users to increase the speed of their transactions to and from the exchange. Additionally, Lightning Network transactions cost less money to complete than Layer 1-based transactions. When there is significant base layer BTC congestion, this difference is very noticeable.

The exchange accepts deposits starting at 0.00001 BTC ($0.30) and going as high as 0.05 BTC ($1,510). Binance will charge a network fee of 0.000002 BTC, or less than 10 cents, for each withdrawal of bitcoin.

When the exchange had to pause BTC withdrawals due to network congestion brought on by the appearance of the BTC-based protocol known as Ordinals, which enables users to inscribe arbitrary data on the BTC blockchain, Binance announced it was working on integrating Lightning Network capabilities on its platform in May.

In response to this, Binance said:

“To prevent a similar recurrence in the future, our fees have been adjusted. We will continue to monitor on-chain activity and adjust accordingly if needed. Our team has also been working on enabling BTC Lightning Network withdrawals, which will help in such situations.”

Binance said in June that it was still working on the integration after some users discovered Lightning nodes connected to the exchange. But Binance cautioned that there was “still more tech work to be done,” promising to provide updates after the integration tasks were completed.

The Lightning Network’s on-demand invoice generation, which is distinct from having pre-generated addresses, has led Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, to claim that the implementation of the Lightning Network was “more complicated” than it might first appear.