Lightning Network nodes, channels, and capacity breaking record, touching skies

The lightning Network (LN), Bitcoin’s marvelous layer-two solution, has recently witnessed the high leap to record levels resulting in increased adoption.

As per the report published by Glassnode, the well-known on-chain analyst, on September 27, the node count of LN has increased by 160% in the current month. This led to a record high of 15,600.
It is interesting to note that only 6,000 LN nodes were alive at the end of August. Additionally, the connections between the nodes (number of channels) have also broken the record and seen a spike of 73,000, making an average of 4.6 channels per node.

Bitcoinvisuals, on the other hand, reported 9.3 channels per node on September 26. The report analyzed that the connections between the nodes after May 2021 have roughly doubled from what they had during 2019-20.

Spike in Lightning Network Capacity

Glassnode said that the capacity of the Lightning Network had seen an “immense growth” in 2021. Total capacity refers to the amount of Bitcoin that can be transferred to the network.
The capacity of the network has recently been the highest of all time, which is around 2,904 BTC (worth $123 million as per the current market price). September alone added 514 BTC to the channel and increased capacity by 170% since January.

A rough average of the LN’s channel capacity is 0.04 BTC (approximately $1,670), which is an all-time high for the network. An increase of 43% has been in the average channel size, which was around 0.028 BTC during the 2019-2020 period.

Recently, Twitter, the well-known social media site, integrated LN for tipping. Along with that, LN rolled out across El Salvador during the country’s massive adoption of digital assets. These events brought Lightning Network in the headlines and increased its popularity even more.

Thaddeus Dryja and Joseph Poon started the Lightning Network in 2015, aiming to move BTC transactions off-chain to ensure high throughput. This also led to a reduction in the cost of transactions.