Asynchronous Lightning Payments with BOLT12 and LNURL
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network enables fast off-chain transactions but requires both sender and receiver to be online and exchange a unique invoice per payment, limiting user experience. Asynchronous payments aim to decouple invoice generation and settlement, allowing senders to initiate transfers even when recipients are offline. Simple fixes—like pre-generated invoices on third-party servers and deferred forwarding—introduce trust risks and lock liquidity across nodes.
A stronger approach, proposed by Matt Corallo in 2021, leverages LNURL and Lightning Service Providers (LSPs). Recipients register with an LSP to asynchronously generate BOLT12 invoices. Senders instruct their LSPs to hold funds until recipients reconnect and trigger settlement, minimizing locked liquidity and avoiding custodial threats. Further security can be achieved with PTLC, requiring collusion to steal funds.
With the recent merge of the BOLT12 specification into the Lightning protocol, asynchronous payments are set to enhance user experience and flexibility on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, paving the way for broader adoption.
Bullish
Introducing asynchronous payments on the Lightning Network addresses long-standing UX barriers—requiring both parties online and locking liquidity—by leveraging BOLT12, LNURL, LSPs and PTLC. Past protocol upgrades (e.g., Taproot for Bitcoin) have spurred adoption by enhancing privacy, efficiency and flexibility. Similarly, merging the BOLT12 spec and deploying secure asynchronous invoices will likely boost transaction volume, attract new users and strengthen off-chain liquidity. Traders can expect increased network activity and improved routing capacity, signaling a bullish outlook for BTC as the Lightning ecosystem matures.