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Lightning Network developer Lightning Labs announced in a blog that it just secured $10 million in Series A funding and has launched a new major product, called Lightning Loop.
The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Ribbit Capital, RRE Ventures, M13 and Slow, along with a roster of angel investors and funds include Ross Stevens, CEO and Founder of Stone Ridge; John Pfeffer from Pfeffer Capital; David B. Heller, former co-Head of Securities at Goldman Sachs), and others.
As part of the deal, Brian Murray, Managing Director at Craft Ventures, will be joining Lightning Labs' board of directors.
Elizabeth Star, CEO and Co-founder at Lightning Labs, said that they will use the funding to "further develop our Lightning payments technology and scale the developer ecosystem.”
"We at Lightning Labs see this as not an accomplishment in and of itself, but a means to achieving our goal of bringing instant bitcoin transactions to millions of people," she added.
In addition, Lightning Labs has announced the launch of its first paid product, the beta release of Lightning Loop.
“Loop helps startups, node operators, and end-users send and receive on Lightning more efficiently. With Loop, users can move funds between the bitcoin blockchain and the Lightning Network in a non-custodial manner. Loop opens up a world of Lightning-native financial products, and this is the first of several ‘blue sky’ Lightning products we’re building," Star said.
The first beta version of lnd for bitcoin mainnet was released less than two years ago but since then, Star said that there has been a massive growth of startups and companies integrating Lightning.
"We’ve seen over 30 companies integrate lnd thus far, with many more in progress, and we’ve had more than 4000 developers and testers contribute to our community," she added.
