Lightning Address

Overview

A Lightning Address is a human-readable identifier in the familiar user@domain email-like form (e.g. satoshi@bitcoin.org) that resolves to an LNURL-pay endpoint, letting anyone receive Bitcoin Lightning payments without sharing a single-use BOLT11 invoice or a raw LNURL string.¹² It is standardized as LUD-16 ("Paying to static internet identifiers") in the LNURL spec set, and is effectively a friendly front-end over LNURL-pay (LUD-06).² Because the address itself is short ASCII text, it is also commonly published, shared as text, or embedded in a QR Code for scan-to-pay.¹

History

Lightning Address was created by Andre Neves (GitHub andrerfneves); the reference repository is andrerfneves/lightning-address and frames the idea as "like an email address, but for your Bitcoin," whose goal is to remove the friction of scanning QR codes or pasting invoices.¹ The protocol is built directly on the LNURL-pay specification.¹ It was subsequently captured as LUD-16 in the canonical lnurl/luds repository, which defines the on-the-wire resolution and response rules.²

Technical specification

Resolution

Given an address <username>@<domain>, a wallet constructs and GETs a .well-known URL:¹²

https://<domain>/.well-known/lnurlp/<username>      (clearnet)
http://<domain>/.well-known/lnurlp/<username>       (onion)

Per LUD-16, allowed username characters are a-z0-9-_. (lowercase), and a username+tag@domain form may be supported, with the tag optionally surfaced in metadata.²

Mapping to LNURL-pay

The endpoint returns the same JSON as LNURL-pay step 3 (LUD-06), and the flow proceeds identically thereafter:²

• callback — URL the wallet calls with an amount,
• minSendable / maxSendable — bounds in millisatoshi,
• metadata — a stringified array that, for Lightning Address, must include an identifier entry: text/identifier for a generic internet identifier or text/email for an actual email address,
• tag: "payRequest".

The wallet then GETs <callback>?amount=<milliSatoshi> and receives {"pr": "<bolt11 invoice>", ...}, which it pays.² In short, a Lightning Address is resolved to an LNURL-pay endpoint and from there is indistinguishable from any other LNURL-pay flow.¹²

Use cases

• Receive-anywhere identifier: publish you@wallet.com on a profile, invoice or business card and accept Lightning payments without rotating invoices.¹
• Tips and donations: a static, shareable address (or its QR Code) collects many payments.¹²
• Streaming / value-for-value: podcast and content platforms route sats to a creator's Lightning Address.¹

Implementations

• andrerfneves/lightning-address — the reference spec, primer and diagrams (JS/Markdown), active 2026.¹
• lnbits/lnurlp — LNbits "Pay Links" extension that serves .well-known/lnurlp/... endpoints, i.e. hosts Lightning Addresses.³
• Most major Lightning custodial and self-hosted wallets/services issue and resolve Lightning Addresses via LUD-16.¹²

Comparison

• Lightning Address vs single-use BOLT11: a BOLT11 invoice is typically single-use with a fixed hash, amount and expiry; a Lightning Address is a permanent, reusable identifier that produces a fresh invoice per payment via LNURL-pay.²
• Lightning Address vs raw LNURL: both ultimately drive the LNURL-pay flow, but the address is short human-readable text (user@domain) instead of a long bech32 lnurl1... string, trading some QR compactness for memorability.¹²
• vs BIP-321 (Bitcoin unified QR) lightning=: BIP-321 (Bitcoin unified QR) embeds a concrete Lightning instruction (a BOLT11 invoice or BOLT12 offer) inside a bitcoin: URI, whereas a Lightning Address is an indirection that must be resolved over HTTPS first.¹²

Status

Lightning Address is an active, widely supported convention across the Lightning ecosystem, standardized as LUD-16 and maintained in 2026.¹²

Sources

1 Lightning Address — like an email address, but for Bitcoin — Andre Neves / GitHub, 2026 2 LUD-16: Paying to static internet identifiers — lnurl/luds, 2026 3 lnbits/lnurlp — GitHub, 2026

Deployments

No country reports mention this standard by name.

Regions / aggregations not mapped to a single country

• Universal