Fast Forward Six Months in Time and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Grew Over 800% in Capacity

As many of our readers may be well aware of, Bitcoin’s Lightning Network has been turning a lot of heads recently— mainly because of its ever-increasing adoption and implementation by a whole host of mainstream financial entities.

Since Bitcoin came to prominence around a decade back, the currency has not been able to touch its envisioned levels of global adoption. This has been due to the asset’s relatively high transaction fees as well its lengthy transaction processing speeds (of around 10 minutes per block). As a result of these issues, a number of Bitcoin proponents are now of the opinion that the premier currency serves to work as a better store of value than as a widely accepted form of digital money.

More on the Matter

The Lightning Network first came into being as a result of BTC’s limitations regarding its scalability and somewhat poor tx capacity. For those who may not be aware of the LN, it is essentially a second-layer payment protocol that has been devised to work atop the Bitcoin[BTC] network. To be a bit more specific, we can see that the implementation of a second-layer protocol was primarily meant to “enable off-chain transactions” in a fast and cost-effective manner.

In this regard, it should be noted that as per an all-new study released by p2sh.info sometime back, the Lightning Network has been witnessed a staggering 830% increase in its overall capacity over the course of the last 6 months.

Chart Showcasing the Growth of the Lightning Network (Source: p2sh.info)

As is quite obvious from the chart presented above, the growth of the Lightning Network took a massive leap during October 2018— when the network’s tx capacity increased from 112.3 BTC to 710 BTC (at the time of writing this article).

To account for this amazing progress, we need to bear in mind that this hike can be attributed to a number of external factors such as:

• Number of nodes
• Network capacity
• New and active channels developed

Other Key Aspects Worth Bearing in Mind

• As per data procured from p2sh’s report, the total number of nodes within the LN ecosystem have increased by around 15.82% over the past 30 days. As a result of this, the total network node count now stands at 6,479.
• The total number of channels within the network have also gone up by a staggering 34.8% over the past month.
• At press time, the total capacity of the Lightning Network stands around 710.13 BTC— a figure that represents an overall hike of 28%.
• Over the past 180 days, over 930 new channels have been added to the network. Not only that, the average tx fees on the network is still pegged at the 1 Satoshi mark.

Final Take

All of the aforementioned statistical data clearly points to the fact that the adoption rate of the Lightning Network is surely rising with each passing day. With that being said, one still has to remember that the LN protocol is still considered by many to be a ‘beta project’.