Lightning Address

Like an email address, but for your Bitcoin!

A massively simpler way for anyone to send you Bitcoin instantly on the Lightning Network.

santos@zbd.gg

andre@sparkwallet.me

bernard@bitnob.com

ethan@pouch.ph

toshihodl@fountain.fm

All examples of a lightning address.

Ideal Use Cases for Lightning Address

User to User Payments

With something that users are already familiar with, it makes sending user to user payments ridiculously easy. A user can follow a flow that is nearly identical to sending an email. All they’d do is add an amount of bitcoin and fire off the payment. It’s super easy and intuitive.

Reward Payouts

Many reward applications can also make use of an Lightning Address. Let’s say the user plays a game and earns some sats, then wants to claim their earned bitcoin.

The game could ask the user to input their Lightning Address once, and then it could let the payments fly automatically after a threshold has been met each time. Set it and forget it.

A few other examples could be completing surveys, engagement with a brand, a pool of rewards from spending, like from a credit card, and much more!

Lightning Money Transfers

Lightning Address makes it really easy for users to transfer money between their different wallets. You can visit the ZEBEDEE App to see examples. A user can set a Lightning Address from ZEBEDEE to another Lightning Address they own to enable easy transfers.

That way they can move money from ZEBEDEE, their primary wallet, to another wallet like Fountain to boost their favorite podcasters and literally stream money like it was data.

Awesome.

Payroll & Payouts

Since a Lightning Address is a static address to receive payments to over the internet, it makes payroll and payouts very simple.

Just simply have the user specify as many lightning addresses as they wish to pay and the corresponding amounts they want to pay each one, have them review, and then just loop over each lightning address firing a payment to each one. Super easy. All paid instantly with near zero fees.

Beautiful.

Splits (Automatic Royalties)

Another incredible feature you can build with Lightning Address is say a group of artists produced an album of music and are selling it using a Lightning Network Invoice . The artists could specify a breakdown of payments by percentage and/or amounts to pay to all the artists programmatically.

That’s right. Someone purchases an album and upon receiving the successful payment, automatically fire off payments to each user with their share directly to their lightning address no matter which provider they are using.

Currency Swaps

With a Lightning Address, it would be possible to add a currency swap using something like a plus sign. Say my lightning address is santos@zbd.gg . You can make it such that any time santos+usd@zbd.gg is paid, it automatically converts to dollars at spot price and is credited to the user’s dollar balance.

Or you can do the same for santos@zbd.gg and then let the user to set a preferred currency where any time a payment is received to santos@zbd.gg it is converted automatically.

Massive.

Wallets

With Lightning Address, it is trivial to enable full Lightning wallet capabilities in your application.

Deposits

Because Lightning Address are human-readable and leverage something users already know how to do (sending an email), it becomes very easy to enable deposits, payments, and withdrawals.

The user can be given their own Lightning Address, which makes it as easy giving out their email. For example, if a user wanted to receive money from another app or from payroll they’d just give their Lightning Address.

Payments

If they want to pay users, all they have to do is type in the person they want to pay’s Lightning Address, amount, and an optional comment. It’s that easy.

Withdrawals

You could allow the user to set a preferred Lightning Address for a user. That would enable one-click withdrawals from their wallet page. The idea is that you’d look up their preferred Lightning Address associated with their account, take the user’s balance, and then fire the payment. Easy!

Points of Friction for Lightning Address

Wallet Support

While, nearly every wallet out of the box supports Lightning Address, some don’t. This is an error that the user can encounter. This could be an error a user could encounter.

Lightning Address Example

santos@zbd.gg

Click here to view the data decoded.

Example Product Flows of a Lightning Address

A user sets a Lightning Address once.

Now they can select an amount and let the payments fly within just 2 clicks.

Conclusion

The Lightning Address provides an easy and intuitive way for anyone to send Bitcoin instantly on the Lightning Network. With Lightning Address, users can make user-to-user payments, reward payouts, and currency swaps with ease. Lightning Address also simplifies payroll and payouts, and allows for automatic royalties to be paid to multiple artists. While nearly every wallet supports Lightning Address, some may not, so this is something to keep in mind. Lightning Address represents a major step forward in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, making it easier than ever to send and receive payments.