Today, Lightning Labs announced the release of Pool, “a non-custodial, peer-to-peer marketplace for Lightning node operators to buy and sell access to liquidity,” according to a press release. The service will allow Lightning Network users to lend out bitcoin in payment channels in return for yield. Businesses and services providers can then draw on this liquidity when needed to manage Lightning Network payment flows.
'LiFi': Lightning-native financial servicesLightning Labs is marketing the service as a flagship for Lightning Finance or “LiFi,” a way for Bitcoiners to generate non-custodial yield on their bitcoin holdings, as opposed to lending them through a custodian like BlockFi or turning them into wrapped bitcoin for DeFi yield farming.
The service has been in a closed alpha with “many of the major exchanges, wallets, and service providers testing this in the background and to make sure it has enough liquidity on it when it launches.” The maximum order amount at launch will be 10 BTC, though Lightning Labs will raise this in the future once the platform has been sufficiently stress tested.
“In our general style of being more cautious, right now the max account size is 10 BTC. Pool is still early and this isn’t DeFi; we don’t want them depositing a million dollars from day one.”
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-lightning-network-payment-channel-liquidityPopular Lightning services like Strike have already encountered surges of demand that required them to quickly open channels in order to onboard new customers. Using Pool, node operators can now be paid for opening up new channels and providing inbound liquidity. This opens the door to new sources of revenue for leasing out liquidity and deploying capital on Lightning. Pool provides an even greater benefit for new participants such as merchants and Lightning developers bootstrapping their liquidity when they first join the network.
To get started and knowing more about Lightning Poolhttps://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-11-02-lightning-pool/