Company Name Lightspark
Founders: David Marcus, Kevin Hurley Christina Smedley James Everingham Christian Catalini Jai Massari Tomer Barel
Date of Founded April 2022, Series A: May 2022
The location of the headquarters: Los Angeles, CA
Bitcoins held by the Treasury N/A
The number of employees: 45
Website: https://www.lightspark.com/
Public or private? Private Investigators
Kevin Hurley and team members at Lightspark Want to make bitcoin more accessible to institutions, everyday users and to all people.
This is why they’ve created Lightspark, a Lightning Service Provider (LSP) — and more — that offers enterprise-grade infrastructure that enables companies around the world as well as the customers for those companies to make payments globally using the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
“We want to carry on the vision that we originally had with Diem,” Hurley spoke to Bitcoin Magazine. “And that was to really open up the financial world, make it into something where you can send money as easily as you send data packets today.”
Hurley also explained why Lightspark decided to use Bitcoin for their development.
“Some of the learnings from [Diem] are that you really need something that’s truly decentralized, something that’s a neutral protocol and something with a lot of liquidity,” Hurley, explained “These are key aspects to Bitcoin and part of what makes Bitcoin so special.”
Lightspark is a system that works.
Lightspark considers itself a more than just a LSP because it offers a Software Development Kit (SDK)Vendors can use API services to create certain features and utilize specific services.
Lightspark SDK allows customers to easily and quickly access Lightning Network payments, without the usual headaches associated with this network.
“We try to abstract [away] all the complexity of Lightning,” Hurley, explained “We talked to a bunch of the companies that have been in the Bitcoin space for a long time and tried to understand why they weren’t using Lightning or why they had tried and given up on it, and we heard a pretty similar refrain from all of them — it was just too complex.”
Companies would need to hire employees who are dedicated solely to the management and rebalancing of liquidity within their Lightning Nodes in order for them use Lightning. Lightspark allows companies to use the Lightning Network by using just a few short lines of Lightspark code. Lightspark takes care of all the technical aspects on the backend. Lightspark also offers additional features which institutions might find useful.
“We have compliance features built on top of our stack,” Lightspark helps companies comply with regulations, says Hurley FinCEN’s Travel Rule.
“We have AI built on top of our stack to make it so payments are extremely successful. We have Predict, which is like the Google Maps for Lightning. [It shows us] where traffic is backed up to help us route transactions more successfully. Then we start to tack on things like UMA or Universal Money Addresses, which allow you to send from any currency to any other currency,” He added.
Universal Money Addresses
UMA, a feature that Lightspark architected is one of its most noteworthy features.
Lightspark is an application that allows businesses to provide their clients with a Universal Money Address. This address is a hybrid of a Cash App $cashtag Then, you can. email address (e.g., $yourname@yourwallet/bank/exchange.com).
A UMA allows users to send crypto and fiat in an easy, seamless manner.
Hurley explains how UMA builds on and is interoperable with LNURL You can also find out more about the following: Lightning Addresses. UMA has its own way of sending fiat, which is different from LNURL.
“You’re able to go from any currency to another currency using UMA,” Share Hurley.
“Let’s say I’m coming from Brazil, and I want to send money to someone in Mexico. Maybe I’m in Mexico visiting and I go to the 7-Eleven and want to buy something. I should be able to send from my native currency to Mexican pesos,” He added.
“With UMA, what happens is my Brazilian reals are converted instantaneously to sats. They’re streamed over Lightning and convert instantly from sats to pesos and pay out to the 7-Eleven.”
UMA is responsible for facilitating the transfer of data on compliance between Lightspark’s various partners located all over the world.
The exchanges, neobanks, and other institutions that partner with Lightspark — all of which are regulated bitcoin/crypto custodians — have the proper money transfer licenses in their respective jurisdictions, which keep Lightspark and its partners in compliance with the aforementioned Travel Rule.
Lightspark Partner Institutions
Lightspark is making headlines recently, after signing deals with institutions such as Coinbase, Xapo and Nubank. As each new partner joins, so do more partners.
“They see the growth — especially when we onboard a Coinbase — and a lot of entities have come to us and been curious about what’s happening,” Hurley, said
“They see that big players are starting to get interested and starting to see real volume on it, and they want to be involved, as well. They don’t want to be left behind because they understand that this area is growing and becoming very important,” He added.
Neobanks that are more technologically advanced, and who want to differentiate themselves from traditional banks, have shown the most interest. Hurley did note that traditional banks were also paying attention.
“The benefit [of what Lightspark provides] applies to a J.P. Morgan just as much as it applies to Nubank,” Hurley, explained
“We’ve engaged with quite a few of them. They oftentimes will need to see others do it first,” “He added.”
“Once they start to see real adoption, I think there will be quick adoption by them, too.”
Hurley pointed out there are good reasons for the traditional large financial institutions to join in.
“Traditional financial firms have big pain points,” Hurley, explained
“They might have bank accounts in multiple countries, and, even within their own bank, transferring money takes days because they are transferring using SWIFT. They’re going from one entity in, let’s say, Argentina to one in Europe, and it takes them three to five days to transfer money. It means they have to set up correspondent banking. It’s a big burden on them and can be quite costly,” He added.
“I think they’re very excited to see something that can work more quickly, more efficiently and have better rails. It’s a net positive for everyone.”
Bitcoin Bulls, but Realistic
They’re aware of the fact that Bitcoin is still a controversial currency.
Hurley believes Lightspark’s approach is a good way to encourage Bitcoin adoption while also keeping the needs of customers in mind.
“To actually get real adoption and to keep increasing adoption, you need to meet consumers where they are, and a lot of consumers right now are comfortable with fiat,” Hurley, said
“Those folks probably don’t know anything about Bitcoin, and it’s going to take a while for them to be exposed to it. So, if you can abstract that away for them, allow them to use the currency they feel comfortable with, that helps get people on board and helps build adoption,” He added.
Hurley did acknowledge that others prefer to simply use bitcoin, and to do so in an unsupervised manner. However, Lightspark & its partners allows users to move their bitcoins into a non-supervised wallet at will.
“Users can exit at any time from a custodian and go to noncustodian,” Hurley said.
He said that Bitcoin or Lightning does not currently have the capacity to reach the mass in a custodial way. That is why Lightspark as well the other companies with which it has partnered are crucial right now.
“You can’t onboard billions of users to Bitcoin and Lightning [non-custodially] today,” Hurley, explained
“Long-term that could be possible, and we are doing a lot of exploration into how to make that happen, because we feel like it’s vital to the ecosystem,” He added.
Hurley, however, sees that the solutions offered by Cash App and Coinbase as well as Lightspark, are a way to get people using Bitcoin without it being too complicated.
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com
