Digital asset exchange OKCoin has become the latest to announce its integration of the Lightning Network, enabling it to access greater support from the Bitcoin ecosystem and faster transaction speeds.

The Lightning Network serves as a layer-2 solution that operates on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, providing it with the means to scale and complete transactions at a fraction of the time and cost. At the moment, OKCoin is undergoing the final phases of integration, with the team highlighting some of the net benefits,

“Integrating the Lightning Network increases transaction speed, meaning that OKCoin customers can now choose to have their transactions occur on the Lightning network. Doing so will confirm transactions within a few seconds instead of up to an hour. It will also reduce our current minimum withdrawal/deposit from 0.001 bitcoin or 100k satoshis (~$35) to 0.000001 bitcoin or 100 satoshis (~$0.04).”

By integrating into the Lightning Network, the digital asset exchange would effectively operate as one of its nodes; supporting the validation of transactions across the ecosystem. Within the announcement post, made on OKCoins blog, Company CEO Hong Fang added the following,

“The lightning network, like Bitcoin, requires a network of nodes and adoption of the technology to perform to the best of its capabilities. As part of our analysis of the technology, we assessed the nodes' strength and quality and now feel the network is strong enough to participate as an exchange with a high volume of withdrawals and deposits a day.”

OKCoin is still keeping abreast of other blockchain solutions but is currently focused on the full integration with Bitcoin's Lightning Network for the time being.

The immediate benefits of integrating with Lightning is the drastic cut to transaction costs and a dramatic increase in their speed. For example, an average transaction on Bitcoin would cost an average of $10, rendering it expensive for the typical holder. Additionally, these same transactions would take around 10-30 minutes to be deposited/withdrawn.

In comparison, transactions using Lightning would cost $0.01 and would take 1-3 seconds to be completed. For any user, the Lightning network provides far greater security and privacy; each transaction takes place off-chain, meaning that the Bitcoin network does not log them.

Next to OKCoin, Kraken Exchange announced that it too would support Lightning by the first half of 2021.

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