Just as the Bitcoin utility continues to expand in the market, so does the layer 2 scaling solution of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Just as the BTC price, the Bitcoin Lightning Network has shown strong growth over the last year.
The number of nodes in the Bitcoin Lightning Network has surged from 7.5K to 14K, as per the stats provided by LookIntoBitcoin. At the same time, the amount of BTC in circulation on the Lightning Network has also doubled.
As the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin continues among retail as well as institutional players, we believe the use of Lightning Network will also grow. U.S.-based Lightning Labs is the brainchild behind the Lightning Network.
Three years, back, Lightning Labs raised $2.5 million for further development. It has also received substantial backup from industry leaders like Jack Dorsey. Digital Asset manager CoinShares recently shared a report last month wherein it writes:
Lightning enables users to amortize the cost of a bitcoin transaction across many payments over time. We see lightning as a critical technology that could evolve bitcoin’s usefulness in payments beyond its stigma as an investment vehicle.
Lightning Better Than Visa
One of the biggest obstacles to retail Bitcoin adoption has been the lack of real-time payment settlements. There’s always been a comparison to market leaders like Visa and Mastercard. However, Lightning aims to solve some of these issues.
Speaking to Business Insider, CoinShares investment strategist James Butterfill said: “Lightning is much more secure than Visa, and could do more transactions than Visa”.
The Lightning Network can send payments as instantaneously as an email. Thus, it brings a major real-time use case for Bitcoin. However, the current Bitcoin demand for on-chain space isn’t much saturated as well.
It will be interesting to see further developments in the Bitcoin Lightning Network as the market progresses. However, widescale adoption will only be possible if it can provide solutions at par with giants like Visa and Mastercard.
As of press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading 1.66% up at a price of $47,478 and a market cap of $891 billion.
