Coingate, the crypto-payments platform announced this week that it was starting to conduct trials for the incorporation of the Litecoin Lighting network unto its network of about 4,500 merchants. According to the company’s marketing manager Veronika Mishura, Litecoin accounts for at least 10% of its monthly trade volume. Integrating Litecoin’s Lightning Network would increase the incentive for its customers due to significant reductions in fees. According to the announcement, the first merchant that will be trying out the Litecoin LN is Surfshark, a VPN provider.
Here’s Mishura’s explanation why the company chose Surfshark pilot their program of onboarding new merchants into the Litecoin LN:
“VPNs are, to be honest one of the most frequently used services by crypto-enthusiasts (what we see by our data). However, due to quite a low price, it is usually a no-win to pay for it with Bitcoin or Litecoin; and that’s exactly what Lightning should solve. That’s what we are trying to showcase – paying even for low-priced products should be possible, convenient, and cheap using cryptocurrency.”
Similar to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, Litecoin’s Lightning Network is a layer two scaling solution which constitutes a network of payment channels which allow for transactions to be settled offline. Successful integration of the Lightning Network into both Bitcoin and Litecoin will ensure that most of the transaction is settled off chain which will significantly increase the network throughput while also reducing the fees involved in effecting transactions.
Coingate is a payment processor focused on the European market that allows its clients (i.e., merchants) to accept both cryptocurrencies and fiat money. The company charges a 1% fee for all transactions and supports a myriad of altcoins.
Following this news, Litecoin price has been on a small rally rising close to 5% on the past 48 hours. It is currently priced at $32.70. Litecoin has been on the news recently for several developments of which the recent price rally could be attributed to including the recent sponsorship for a UFC fighter and the addition of a Litecoin to OpenBazaar’s – decentralized marketplace – latest release of a multi wallet which features three other coins including Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Zcash (ZEC).
