What is a Bitcoin Lightning address?

A Bitcoin Lightning address is a human-readable identifier that looks exactly like an email address, for example name@pig.gy. Anyone can send Bitcoin to it from any Lightning wallet. It's the simplest way to receive sats without copy-pasting invoices.

How do I get a Bitcoin Lightning address?

You need a wallet that issues one. Piggy gives every upgraded Piggy its own Bitcoin Lightning address at pig.gy. Download the app, pick your Piggy, upgrade, and you get an address like yourname@pig.gy on the spot.

Lightning address vs Bitcoin address: what's the difference?

A regular Bitcoin address is a long string of letters and numbers for onchain payments. A Lightning address is a short, reusable, human-readable identifier for instant Lightning Network payments. One Lightning address can receive unlimited payments. A fresh onchain Bitcoin address is usually recommended per payment for privacy.

Do I need to run a Lightning node to have a Lightning address?

No. Your wallet handles the Lightning infrastructure for you. You just use the address.

Is it free to receive at a Lightning address?

Receiving is free. The sender's wallet pays the routing fee, which is usually a fraction of a sat.

How to Get a Bitcoin Lightning Address

A Bitcoin Lightning address looks like name@pig.gy. It works like an email address, except instead of receiving messages, you receive Bitcoin. Anyone with a Lightning wallet can send sats to it, instantly, from anywhere in the world, without copying an invoice or scanning a QR code.

What a Bitcoin Lightning address is

Technically, a Lightning address is a shorthand for a LNURL-pay endpoint hosted at a domain you trust. When someone sends to name@pig.gy, their wallet does a quick lookup at pig.gy, fetches a fresh Lightning invoice for the requested amount, and pays it. You don't see any of that. You just see sats arrive.

A Lightning address is reusable and permanent. You can put name@pig.gy on your profile, in your bio, in a tip jar, on a podcast page. Every payment generates a fresh invoice under the hood, so there is no reuse risk like there would be with a single Bitcoin address.

How to get one

You need a Bitcoin wallet that issues Lightning addresses. Not every wallet does. The setup is similar across all of them:

Download the wallet.
Complete setup (most wallets today use a passkey or a seed phrase).
Claim a username, or let the wallet assign one.
You now have an address at yourname@walletdomain.com.

With Piggy specifically, the flow is:

Get the app for iOS or Android.
Create a passkey. Takes under a minute.
Upgrade your Piggy and pick a name. That name becomes your Lightning address at pig.gy, for example oink@pig.gy.
Share it. Anyone with a Lightning wallet can now feed your Piggy.

If you want to try a Lightning address before committing, claim 21 sats from the Piggy faucet. You enter any @pig.gy address and 21 sats show up in your wallet. This lets you test sending to a Lightning address.

Lightning address vs Bitcoin address

	Bitcoin address (onchain)	Lightning address
Looks like	`bc1q...` (42+ chars)	`name@pig.gy`
Speed	~10 min to ~1 hour	Instant
Fee	Whatever the network demands	Usually <1 sat
Reusable	Recommended not to	Yes, forever
Min amount	~546 sats (dust limit)	1 sat
Good for	Large amounts, savings, cold storage	Small, frequent payments

Most Piggy owners never touch onchain addresses. Lightning is cheaper, faster, and more private for small, frequent payments.

A few things to know

Your Lightning address lives at a domain. That domain has to keep running for the address to work. This is a real dependency. With Piggy, your keys are on your device (so your sats are always yours), but the public name@pig.gy endpoint depends on us keeping the domain alive.
Anyone can send to it. This is the feature. If you want a private Lightning address, don't share it publicly.
Names are unique per domain. Once someone claims oink@pig.gy, no one else can use it. If your Piggy dies, its name is retired forever.

Try it

Claim 21 sats to test sending to a Lightning address
What Piggy is, if you haven't yet
Get the app to claim your own Lightning address