Node count for Bitcoin’s flagship Layer 2 solution, the Lightning Network (LN), has grown to an all-time high following wider adoption.
According to the Week on Chain report from the network analytics provider on September 27, the number of Lightning Network nodes increased by 160% during September to a record high of 15,600. At the end of August, there were only 6,000 LN nodes.
The report added that the number of channels or connections between different nodes on the local network also peaked at 73,000, averaging 4.6 channels per node. Bitcoinvisuals is currently reporting an average of 9.3 channels per node as of September 26th.
“This is roughly double the number of channels broadcast between 2019-2020 and most of this growth has occurred since May 2021.”
According to Glassnode, the overall capacity of the Lightning network has grown significantly this year. The calculation shows the total amount of BTC that can be converted with LN.
Network capacity is currently at its highest at 2,904 BTC ($ 123 million at current prices). This performance marks a 170% increase in capacity from about 22% in January, or 514 BTC added to the network in September alone.
The average channel bandwidth, or the amount of BTC sent per channel, is currently 0.04 BTC (about $ 1,670), which is another high for the network at any time. That’s 43% more than the 0.028 BTC average channel size through 2019 and 2020.
Related: OKEx to Accelerate Bitcoin Transactions with Lightning Network
The Lightning Network recently made headlines thanks to the popular social networking site Twitter, which included betting LNs, as well as the nationwide spread of the network across El Salvador among the country’s digital assets.
The Lightning Network was proposed by researchers Thaddeus Dryya and Joseph Poon in 2015 as a way to take Bitcoin transactions off the chain to improve performance and reduce costs.
