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Bitcoin Lightning Network nodes increasing; hits 10000

TL;DR

An increase of around three percent (3.1%) has been observed in the nodes for Bitcoin Lightning Network. The recent boost has raised the said number of nodes up to ten thousand (10,000).

Relative to the number of nodes of Bitcoin, which is a hundred thousand (100,000) nodes, the number of Lightening nodes is very small, yet the speed makes it up for the numbers.

Since the Bitcoin Lightning Network is a decentralized scaling network, it is generally more economical and more rapid than the Bitcoin network.

Effect of new Bitcoin Lightning Network nodes

Due to the increased speed, the Lightning Network can process about a million (1,000,000) transactions per second. Whereas the original Bitcoin platform can process just about seven (7) transactions per second.

This ability of the Lightning Network to process at such high speed allows the network to go forth with large amounts of micropayments as low as one Satoshi, which is a hundred millionth fraction of a Bitcoin. This is what allows the Lightning Network to deal with the growing number of users and transactions.

During transactions, the network nodes provide channels for transactions against a small amount of fee. These nodes are different from ones used by Bitcoins which are the first layer or “layer one” of the blockchain. The efficiency of the Bitcoin network does not depend upon the number of nodes but the resilience and incontrovertibility of the network do depend upon them.

On the other hand, the efficiency of the Lightning Network is affected directly by the number of nodes; i.e. the more the nodes, the greater the efficiency of the network.

Payments are trafficked between nodes until they reach the recipient. Thus, if a network has more nodes, there will be more links between the nodes which will aid in the efficiency, reliability, and velocity of the payments.

This does not mean that the Lightning Network is problem-free. In the beginning, the network faced various problems due to the lack of sufficient amount of nodes. Various times, transactions would fail due to a large amount of payments and the lack of enough carriers to allow the accomplishment of the transaction.

Along with this, the fact that the entire network does not grow simultaneously is also true. Even though the number of nodes has increased, according to 1ML, the payment channels have fallen by approximately one percent (1.1%) and are now around thirty-six thousand (36,000).

This also hinders the completion of transactions. The recent downfall in the Bitcoin price has led to the shrinking of locked funds of the Lightening network by two percent (2%) which means it is slightly under seven (7) million dollars. About eight hundred and thirty bitcoins (830 BTC) are stuck in the Bitcoin network in over the last month.

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Johnson Go

Blockchain enthusiast, project management specialist, writer and crypto investor. JG deals mostly with problems and solutions of crypto projects and provides market outlook for investments. He contributes his analytical skills to projects.

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