The network of second layer micropayments for Bitcoin's blockchain, Lightning Network (LN) reached 100 BTC in routing capacity , in addition to having reached 10,000 channels to receive this type of transactions.
The figure is significant, especially considering that it is a 290% growth in the last month in terms of routing capacity and 29% in terms of the number of open channels. The Lightning Network network has 2,844 nodes, of which 2,140 are public.
Recall that LN is a decentralized system for instant micropayments , which are carried out outside the main Bitcoin chain .
This second layer allows the main chain to be freed from a significant number of transactions, posing a potential solution to scalability problems , as well as considerably reducing the execution times of transactions. Lightning Network has been developed to allow instant payments and already has some use cases like the Lightning Spin betting roulette .
Tools such as the Satoshi's Place or Poketoshi collaborative blackboard have been some of the cases of use of this second layer of microtansactions. Wallets for Android, iOS and computers have also been released.
The development of the network in the last six months has been really dizzying . In January of this year this side channel to the Bitcoin blockchain started operations, with 69 nodes, 135 payment channels, and an exchange capacity of just over 1 BTC. Since then, the growth of LN has not stopped.
The main development teams of the protocol and network are ACINQ, Lightning Labs and Blockcstream, who have presented some interesting advances and have even launched the beta version of their clients to interact with this network of micropayments. In addition, it has had an important reception among merchants . Bitrefill recently launched a tool to buy Amazon gift cards through this micropayment tool.
The development of the protocol has been thanks to the collaboration of multiple actors who have taken advantage of the protocol specification to suggest improvements such as eltoo , to raise privacy and help simplify the creation and management of payment channels, solving possible problems of updating of the operations carried out in the payment channels in the main chain.
The Payments of Multiple Atomic Routes (AMP) have also been raised as an important feature of the Lightning Network software that will allow payments to be made through the combination of the amounts of various user payment channels.
