Bitcoin lightning startup ACINQ launches a wallet for faster payments ‘under 3 minutes’

ACINQ, a startup that is working on bitcoin’s Lightning Network to make it a “scalable and instant” payments network, has just launched a non-custodial wallet for making faster payments.

Dubbed “Phoenix,” the second-generation lightning wallet allows making payments “in less than 3 minutes,” ACINQ announced in a Twitter thread on Friday. It said users can set up the wallet, receive money, make on-chain and off-chain payments and do a full backup restore, all within 3 minutes.

ACINQ said it thinks Phoenix is the future of bitcoin/lightning user experience as it has a simple onboarding process, provides simple seed-based backup/restore and is also non-custodial.

The news comes just days after ACINQ raised $8 million in a Series A funding round, which was led by Idinvest Partners and also saw the participation of Serena and state-owned French investment bank Bpifrance. The startup has raised a total of $10 million in venture funding to date.