Bitcoin Lightning Network transactions
Handle transactions more efficiently using micropayment channels.
The Lightning Network (LN) enables Bitcoin off-chain transactions. These do not produce a unique on-chain transaction hash (txnId) and do not provide an on-chain beneficiary wallet address per payment. Therefore, Lightning payments cannot be submitted to the Sumsub Travel Rule.
Unaccepted data
You cannot submit Lightning payment artifacts, including:
- Lightning invoices (BOLT11/BOLT12), LNURL.
- Lightning Address payloads.
- Payment hash/preimage/routing data.
- Channel identifiers (channel ID, short_channel_id).
Accepted data
You can submit BTC on-chain transfers such as regular Bitcoin transactions with txnId and on-chain addresses.
You can do this using the standard Travel Rule flows:
- Before on-chain outgoing transfer — when you know the BTC recipient wallet address—you will broadcast the BTC transaction after the Travel Rule exchange is completed.
- After on-chain outgoing transfer — when you received a BTC transaction on-chain and can provide the BTC txnId.
Channel open/close transactions
You can see the BTC txnIds related to Lightning channel management, such as:
- Channel open (funding) transactions.
- Channel close/force close (settlement) transactions.
These transactions are related to channel management/settlement and must not be submitted as a substitute for an individual Lightning payment (they do not map 1:1 to a Lightning payment beneficiary).
For example, you must not submit a withdrawal through a Lightning invoice (LN payment), as it is an off-chain payment that has no on-chain txnId and no on-chain beneficiary address.
However, you must submit a BTC on-chain withdrawal using the Before on-chain outgoing transfer flow and an outbound BTC on-chain deposit using the After on-chain incoming transfer flow and the BTC txnId.
Updated about 3 hours ago