OKCoin announced on Friday that it will be integrating the Lightning Network to "create the best trading experience for [its] customers." The Lightning Network is Bitcoin's leading scaling solution that allows Bitcoin users to send transactions near-instantly and at negligible cost.

The feature is not live yet, though the exchange shared it expects to launch it within the first quarter of the year.

By allowing users to choose Lightning over the Bitcoin mainchain, the exchange plans to reduce the minimum deposit and withdrawal amount from 0.001 bitcoin (around $33 at press time) to 0.000001 bitcoin, or 100 satoshis (around $0.03 at press time).

CEO Hong Fang commented on the announcement that OKCoin felt as though the Lightning Network had reached a point at which it can handle exchange-level demand:

As part of our analysis of the technology, we assessed the strength and quality of the nodes and now feel the network is strong enough to participate as an exchange with a high volume of withdrawals and deposits a day. We hope other blockchain companies follow suit and lift the whole industry up by speeding up bitcoin payments and look further to working further with the Lightning Labs team."

OKCoin's decision to add Lightning support presents a further commitment to fostering development surrounding Bitcoin. Throughout 2020, the exchange distributed $500,000 in the form of grants, as part of the OKCoin Open Source Developer Grant program.

As reported by the BTC Times previously, United Kingdom-based Bitcoin exchange CoinCorner launched support for the Bitcoin-based technology earlier this month. 

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