The Lightning Network (LN) can now accept over 10 bitcoins’ worth of capacity on its mainnet implementation for the first time. Statistics from April 1 show that mainnet Lightning, now has capacity for 10.476 BTC equivalent to over $70,000.
There have been over 500 new nodes in the last 10 days.
Wow! Close to 500 new nodes join the #LightningNetwork in the last 10 days as more services adopt #bitcoin lightning payments. This week, @acinq_co plans to release the mainnet version of eclair, the first ever lightning wallet for mobile. Get ready.
Nodes: 1,517
Channels: 3,490 pic.twitter.com/tm9LrvPgtU— A v B ⚡ (@ArminVanBitcoin) April 1, 2018
The main news released yesterday was that the Lighting Network on the mainnet passed 10BTC in total capacity.
The mainnet Lightning Network just crossed 10 BTC in total capacity.https://t.co/nBT8mWAkBD pic.twitter.com/Nf3oz1nEYl
— Antoine Le Calvez (@khannib) March 31, 2018
In terms of service adoption of LN a new widget tool, LightningTip, was released to allow websites to easily accept Lightning payments.
Just released the first beta of LightningTip! I created it to make it easy to accept tips via the Lightning Network on my website. It uses LND as backend to create invoices and monitor which of them were paid.
Source code: https://t.co/bPwqqHqwYB pic.twitter.com/wIMb4a5SsJ
— Michael (@michael1011at) March 29, 2018
Last week we reported that open source WordPress e-commerce platform wooCommerce also announced it had added LN functionality for both Bitcoin and Litecoin payments.
Lightning mark its debut for mainnet Bitcoin use. The first beta implementation in the form of Lightning Labs’ Lightning Daemon (lnd) was released to considerable acclaim, the startup also announcing a successful $2.5 million funding round, which included Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Now, with over 1500 nodes, of which 1126 are public, the protocol has even surpassed the node count of the altcoin which states its purpose as doing LN’s job: Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
While continuing to tout itself as a cheaper, faster version of Bitcoin, data confirms BCH is now less prevalent than Bitcoin Lightning Network nodes.
At the same time, advances in SegWit adoption for Bitcoin have brought previously high fees down to a fraction of values seen just weeks ago. Many popular consumer wallets, such as Blockchain.info, were suggesting fees of just 2 satoshis per byte at press time April 1.
Meanwhile, advances in usability might be reflected in market sentiment, with BTC/USD staying just above $7,000 at the time of writing.
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