Key TakeawaysKey Takeaways

• BitGo has announced Lightning Earn, an integration with Amboss’s Rails product, giving institutional bitcoin holders a custody-grade path to deploy their BTC in Lightning Network infrastructure and receive bitcoin-denominated routing fees.
• Lightning Earn participants receive routing fees by routing payments across the Lightning Network and leasing liquidity to where it is needed — without selling their bitcoin or taking on token risk.
• Clients can leverage Lightning Earn using BitGo’s same security controls and governance workflows which they rely on for standard custody operations.
• BitGo has deployed 10 bitcoin from its own treasury into Lightning Earn as a direct expression of confidence in the product.

For most of Bitcoin's history, institutional holders have faced a frustrating choice: leave BTC idle in cold storage, or surrender custody to a lending platform. Today, that trade-off no longer exists.

Introducing Lightning Earn: BitGo's integration with Amboss Rails.

What is Lightning Earn?What is Lightning Earn?

BitGo’s new Lightning Earn, powered by Amboss Rails, allows institutions to serve the Lightning Network with payment infrastructure, capturing fees from payment routing and liquidity leasing.

The Lightning Network is Bitcoin's Layer 2 payments infrastructure. It works by routing payments through a network of funded channels, settling transactions near-instantly and at a fraction of the cost of standard Bitcoin transfers. Every payment that moves through the network relies on two things: route availability and sufficient liquidity.

• Payment routing: Participants supply liquidity to Lightning channels and receive routing fees each time a payment is routed through their channels. The more reliable your routing infrastructure, the more routing fees you may receive.
• Liquidity leasing: Participants lease liquidity to where it is needed across the Lightning Network, receiving fees from operators who need channel capacity but don't want to lock up capital to provide it themselves. Your bitcoin can connect to other Lightning participants on demand, generating additional fees. Both are bitcoin-denominated.

Both mechanisms allow institutions to participate in the Lightning Network protocol and capture fees, without selling bitcoin.