The new site spotlights L402 as a way for software agents to buy API access over Bitcoin's Lightning Network using payment and authentication in a single flow.
Lightning Labs has launched a dedicated website for its L402 protocol, sharpening its pitch for Bitcoin-native machine-to-machine payments as AI agents increasingly need to buy access to digital services. The protocol was already part of the company's stack, but the standalone site reframes it as infrastructure for automated commerce over Bitcoin's Lightning Network. L402 repurposes HTTP 402 Payment Required to combine payment and authentication in one interaction. When a client requests a protected API endpoint, the server returns an HTTP 402 response with a token and a Lightning invoice. After the invoice is paid, the client presents the token together with the payment preimage to access the service. Lightning Labs says the model avoids accounts, intermediaries and human involvement, and enables stateless verification because the server can validate the proof without querying a payment database. Company documentation says Aperture, an implementation of the standard, is already used by Lightning Loop, a non-custodial swap service for Bitcoin and Lightning. The launch comes as rival approaches emerge for autonomous software payments. Coinbase's x402 uses the same HTTP 402 concept on Ethereum-based rails, has moved to the Linux Foundation with backing from Google, Stripe and Visa, and Visa has also released a command-line payment tool for AI agents.