Block Floats New Subsidiary to Help Enhance Lightning Network

In its bid to drive the overall usability of the Lightning Network, American multinational payments firm, Block Inc (NYSE: SQ) has announced the establishment of a new subsidiary called C=. While not the founder of the Lightning Network, Block has been highly committed to its overall growth, thanks to efforts from Jack Dorsey, one of the chief Bitcoin Maxists out there.

According to a Press Release shared by the company, C= is created in order 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.”

When Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin, his primary goal was for it to serve as a medium of value transfer. The premier cryptocurrency has served this purpose thus far with a massive adoption to show for it. In all, it has grown by far and there is now congestion, manifesting as slower and more expensive transactions.

This served as the basis for the establishment of the Lightning Network, a Layer-2 protocol built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Overall, the Lightning Network corrects the woes of Bitcoin but also has its own inherent problem, the shortfall in liquidity.

The new Block subsidiary is thus created to solve this inherent challenge. As described by the firm, “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.”

Specifically, C= will provide node operators, wallet service providers, and mainstream users in order to bolster the connections to the Lightning Network. The firm said C= will further eliminate the drudgery associated with depending on a third party for liquidity provisions.

Block Inc’s New Subsidiary Has Defined Goals

According to the press release, C= will interact with all of the players it is bringing on board in a whole new way. It said its relationship with the node operators will be marked by the provision of liquidity to enable transactions and “collaborate with developers to provide more efficient routing and liquidity to node operators via APIs and services.”

The Jack Dorsey-lead company is committed to the future of crypto payments through Bitcoin. While the exact cash commitments are not defined, allowing access to its Bitcoin reserve is billed to help push forth the overall usability of the protocol whose influence has started spreading to more countries.

With the new outfit, Block Inc will now have a defined presence, not just as a promoter, but as a major stakeholder in the Lightning Network ecosystem.

“The Lightning Network is the future of bitcoin transactions, but it’s still new and it can be hard to get liquidity where you need it to send and receive your payments,” said Nick Slaney, lead at c=. “We’re excited to use the bitcoin in our treasury to grow the Lightning Network and our company in a mutually beneficial way.”

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