You Can Now Get Paid For Using Bitcoin's Lightning Network

Those running lightning nodes are earning a little extra bitcoin.

Trumpeted as a way to scale bitcoin to handle mainstream adoption, there's a lesser-known perk to spinning up a lightning node to allow users to send cheap, instant payments - you can make money.

Today's average fee on the lightning network clocks in at about one satoshi, worth a fraction of a cent, per hop.

The lightning network is what the name implies: a network.

For now, participating in the lightning network takes some technical know-how and quite a bit of digital storage capacity.

Anyone who wants to route a lightning payment needs to download bitcoin's entire transaction history, nearly 200 GB of data, and then download the lightning software on top of that.

For whatever reason, right now, many lightning nodes aren't charging any fees; it's possible many of the nodes are just lightning enthusiasts that aren't worried about making money from their interest.

"As the network grows and a smaller portion are using it for ideological reasons, fees will move toward a more economic outcome."

Bosworth notes, specialized lightning payments, such as those trading one cryptocurrency for another, will be more complex and as such, could be spendier.

For one thing, the costs of spinning up a node and routing payments via the lightning network are not that high.