• TBD, a subsidiary of Jack Dorsey’s Block, has announced a new Lightning Network business called c=.
• The purpose of the company is to provide infrastructure using bitcoin from Block’s treasury to make bitcoin’s Lightning Network more usable and reliable for developers, businesses and users.
• c= will build infrastructure and provide liquidity to enable transactions, collaborate with developers and offer APIs and services.
TBD Announces New Business: c=
TBD, a Bitcoin-focused subsidiary of Jack Dorsey’s Block, has announced a new Lightning Network business called c=. The purpose of the company is to “provide infrastructure using bitcoin from Block’s treasury to make bitcoin’s Lightning Network more usable and reliable for developers, businesses (such as merchants that accept Lightning payments), and those businesses’ end consumers,” according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.
Purpose of Company
The release explains that the Lightning Network is still growing, and that transactions often fail due to liquidity shortfalls. In order to address that, “c= will build infrastructure using the bitcoin it is committing to the network so that businesses and wallets can make their Lightning transactions more reliable and dependable.”
Services Offered
For Lightning node operators, c= states that it will provide liquidity to enable transactions and “collaborate with developers to provide more efficient routing and liquidity to node operators via APIs and services.” Nick Slaney, lead at c= told Bitcoin Magazine “We’re excited to use the bitcoin in our treasury to grow the Lightning Network and our company in a mutually beneficial way.”
Background Information
In 2022 when Square was renamed into Block Mike Brock explained how TBD’s mission was “to bridge the old with the new … We are building a new open-source company from the ground up focused on open protocols and open standards that all participants in economy can benefit from”. Since then they have explored Bitcoin-based decentralized web services including DIDs (decentralized identifiers), decentralized web nodes etc. Now they have entered into Bitcoin’s second layer scaling protocol which means they have major presence in Lightning Infrastructure.
Conclusion
This move by TBD will help increase usage of Lightning Networks as it provides many useful services like providing liquidity enabling transactions or collaborating with developers via APIs among others. This could be very helpful for businesses or individuals running a lightning node who can gain efficiencies without relying on intermediaries