Lightning Labs raises USD 10 million to be the 'Visa' of Bitcoin

The round was led by Craft Ventures, with other investors including Slow Ventures, former Goldman Sachs co-head of securities David Heller, Avichal Garg of Electric Capital and Ribbit Capital. Lightning Labs released a beta version of the scaling solution LND in 2018 and previously raised USD 2.5 million in a seed round from investors including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Square executive Jacqueline Reses, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee and former PayPal COO David Sacks. 

The startup also launched a mobile wallet app in June 2019, and as of press time the company is offering a paid service called Lightning Loop. The service aims to help merchants manage their payment channels, which need to have Bitcoin in them in order to stay open; it works similar with a prepaid card for a lightning account.

This service, which will charge a small percentage of each full loop, helps merchants and exchanges maintain liquidity in the channels. The startup aims to distinguish itself from similar offerings by becoming an ‘infrastructure provider’ to other startups, according to CoinDesk.