By We all love pizza. Some of us love crypto too. Earlier this week 150 such people purchased a pizza with Bitcoin via the lightning network.
Fold, a crypto payments startup launched a web-based Domino’s Pizza on Wednesday. The app, in a nutshell, carries out fiat pizza purchases on behalf of lightning network users. Will Reeves, product lead at Fold stated:
“We’re trying to make bitcoin fun again and illustrate that lightning is at a point where it is mainstream-ready.”
In the next six months, Fold’s web-based app will integrate lightning for all it’s shopping options which include Uber, Target, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks and Whole Foods. Due to the fact that these are not official partnerships, the crypto startup places orders on users behalf and converts payments to fiat to create a seamless experience. However, only time will tell how this will factor into Fold’s revenue model on the lightning feature leaves the beta phase.
Reeves commented on the experiment:
“The average purchase was $25. Since the average lightning payment is usually less than $5 so this was able to stretch the Lightning Network to higher value payments for the first time at volume.”
As per data from 1ML, the overall network set record highs this past week with more than 26,588 active payment channels processing $2.4 million which is a 39% increase compared to January 2019. Reeves added that orders came in from every state in the USA.
He stated:
“It was pretty evenly spread across the country, which was great to see.”
Reeves also stated that after the Fold integration on the lightning network, the firm has plans to roll out mobile versions of the app for both iOS and Android. The startup which is helmed by seven members and is incubated by Thesis, a venture studio, is currently in the process of a Series A funding round and are also currently exploring avenues to diversify it’s retail brand services.
Fold currently serves 1,500 monthly users, according to Reeves which roughly facilitates 35,000 total bitcoin transactions since the app first launched back in 2014. Up until now, the project was funded by a small seed round via Boost VC. Going forward, Reeves stated that they plan to team up with a number of crypto wallet companies for direct integrations.
Reeves added:
“The largest barrier to conversion was setting up a new lightning wallet.”
He added that despite there being 1,500 orders, there was only a 10% conversion rate as many users found it difficult to make use of lightning-enabled bitcoin wallets.
Reeves added:
“We’ve learned a lesson that in order to grow the lightning ecosystem we not only need the best products but the best education as well. We will incorporate that into our plan going forward.”
Going beyond wallet integration, Reeves explained that Fold also has plans to partner with Casa, a custody solutions startup for direct integration with the Case browser extension in an effort to allow hardware node owners to use it to purchase pizza.
Notably, Fold is not the only startup leading the charge for lightning mainstream adoption.
Early this month, Koala Studio launched with its lightning-powered chess game which grants users the ability to wager with small amounts of bitcoin. In addition to this, lightning users have already completed 3,536 jobs via the bitcoin-integrated freelance job site LND Work.
Jack Dorsey, Square CEO during a recent podcast announced that this company’s Cash App will also integrate lightning capabilities soon.
Speaking about the partnership with Casa Reeves stated:
“We’re looking forward to working that team to spread lightning to the rest of the world.”
Have you made use of the lightning network? What are your thoughts, could it indeed find mainstream adoption sooner than later? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
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