Earlier this week, the number of Lightning Network open payment channels reached 1,000 for the first time, marking yet another achievement for this technology that seeks to revolutionize how we do business with bitcoin.
The Lightning Network is considered by many to be one of several long-term solutions to Bitcoin's network congestion, which reduced criptomoeda's utility for small payments, causing several companies, including Stripe and Steam, to stop working with bitcoin.
Lightning Network promises to ease network congestion by moving transactions out of the main blockchain and making them into a second layer. Using payment channels, LN users will be able to make near-instant transactions with virtually no cost, arguing that it will make Bitcoin an attractive medium for transactions of all sizes.
Although the Lightning Network software is still in the alpha testing phase, enthusiasts, however, have already begun to configure the nodes on the Bitcoin mainnet and open the payment channels with each other. However it is still not recommended to do transactions in the mainnet, only in the testnet.
At the time of writing, there were already 419 nodes running the LN software on the mainnet, with more than 1,000 open channels. In testnet, this number is much larger, with 1,702 nodes and 5645 channels.
For comparison, Bitcoin Cash - the fourth largest crypto-currency on the market - has 1,171 active nodes.
Tags: #cryptocurrency #lightningnetwork #blockchain #segwit #bitcoin
Author: Portal do Bitcoin