🤖 AI can now make payments autonomously: Lightning Labs opens Bitcoin payment channels for artificial intelligence
The future AI assistants will be able to independently pay subscription fees, API calls, or server resources, and this vision is becoming a reality. Lightning Labs has released an open-source toolkit that allows AI agents to directly connect to the Lightning Network.
Why is this important?
Traditional banking systems are designed for humans: they require identification, credit cards, and KYC. AI agents cannot open bank accounts, but they are inherently skilled in code. Lightning Labs has addressed this pain point through the L402 protocol.
Core features:
This codebase includes 7 key "skills" for AI:
✅ Autonomous payments without registration or API keys.
✅ Node management and status queries.
✅ lnget tool: an HTTP client that can automatically analyze bills, complete Lightning Network payments, and obtain proofs of cryptocurrency transactions.
Market background:
We are on the brink of an explosion in “machine finance.” Just recently, Coinbase launched Agentic Wallets, and Stripe also announced a preview of Machine-to-Machine payments.
Bitcoin seems to be becoming the “native currency” of artificial intelligence. Fast, borderless, fully automated—this perfectly aligns with the needs of autonomous agents.
Do you think BTC will become the mainstream currency among robots in the coming years? Feel free to discuss in the comments! 👇
#Bitcoin #LightningNetwork #AI #加密货币新闻 #LightningLabs
