Lightning Addresses

Before Lightning addresses existed, receiving a Lightning payment required generating a fresh invoice — a unique QR code for a specific amount that expired after a set time. Every payment needed a new invoice. Sharing a permanent receiving address wasn’t possible.

Lightning addresses changed this entirely.

A Lightning address looks exactly like an email address: username@domain.com. Someone with a compatible wallet can type or paste your Lightning address and send you any amount, instantly, without you needing to generate anything in advance.

Put your Lightning address in your email signature. Add it to your social media bio. Print it on a business card. Anyone with a Lightning wallet can send you sats immediately, 24 hours a day, without any back-and-forth.

Most Lightning wallets now support the Lightning address standard. Strike users have addresses like name@strike.me. Phoenix users can get an address through a service like ln.tips or Stacker News. Some wallets generate them automatically.

The payment experience from the sender’s side: they enter your Lightning address exactly like typing an email address, enter an amount, and press send. The payment arrives in your wallet in under a second. Neither party needed to coordinate timing or generate a one-time invoice.

Lightning addresses are one of the clearest examples of how the user experience of Bitcoin payments has evolved. Early Lightning required technical knowledge to use. A Lightning address requires the same knowledge as an email address.

This is how payments should work. It just took fifteen years of Bitcoin development to get here.

Tomorrow: what are Zaps — Lightning meets social media.

— The Daily Bit