The number of Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) nodes has reached ten,000 for the beginning time, co-ordinate to real-fourth dimension LN statistics site 1ML.

Co-ordinate to 1ML, the number of nodes on the LN has grown by 3.17% over the past 30 days to reach a record loftier of x,003 network nodes at press time. At the same time, the number of nodes with active channels is five,975 out of full of 36,246 channels at press time, with just a 0.34% growth over the past month.

The LN is a second-layer blockchain protocol designed to provide high-speed transactions for Bitcoin, wherein nodes are individual payment channels between various parties allowing them to send and receive BTC between each other.

The LN country, according to LNBIG

As the person behind the LNBIG entity that controls over xl% of the Lightning Network's capacity told industry-focused media outlet The Cake, they maintain statistics of all local balances, which are hidden from public view. They explained that LN explorers can not know who created channels and which side bitcoins were used.

When asked what features should be added to the LN to attract more BTC users, the speaker singled out atomic multi-path payments, which will purportedly play a large role in Bitcoin automated teller machines. "For the widespread adoption of the Lightning Network, it is important to have software that integrates the wallet with accounting," they added.

Stipulating the LN'southward viability in the event that routing fees practise not outperform lending rates, the individual said that information technology is also early on to make money in the LN. As for the biggest weakness of the LN, they note the modest audience, adding:

"Other problems concern node operators, but here they are not problems of mass adoption. The infrastructure of nodes already allows for orders of magnitude more payments than now. Moreover, for this, you can non increase the chapters because the funds are distilled from one end of the channel to the other, and this process does not consume bitcoins from node operators. It'southward like a circulatory organization, and the body is already full of claret. It merely remains for him to live an active life."

Recent developments of the LN

In late August, blockchain evolution company Blockstream announced the release of version 0.7.2 of its scalability software c-lightning, an LN implementation that supports dynamic plugin management every bit well as "the upcoming signet."

In July, the LN developers revealed a new node monitoring tool. One of the main goals of this tool is to provide a way to prevent certain network bug before they manifest.  Users could purportedly also use this tool to monitor trends such equally the number of channels over fourth dimension, as well as which spots have the best routing fees.