Lightning Network is Ready for the Next Step in its Evolution; Bitcoin Capacity Across Channels Hits Peak
2 min readThe cumulative capacity across all channels on the layer 2 solution of bitcoin Lightning Network has hit an all-time high at 1,106 BTC, worth about $11.8 million at current bitcoin prices, as per 1ML.
The previous high was in early May 2019 at 1,099.7 BTC, worth about $6.5 million at that time.
The number of channels is also approaching the peak of 40k from mid-March 2019, as it currently hovers around 37,600. As for the number of nodes that open payment channels with each other funded with BTC, it is above 7,600.
Amidst this, Lightning Labs, which maintains the Lightning Network Daemon (LND) implementation of the Lightning Network, started supporting Wumbo with the release of Ind 0.11-beta — channels over the 0.1677 BTC limit originally imposed to discourage users from putting too much money into the early software.
This latest development means “the software has progressed to a point where advanced users, companies, and node operators can opt into larger channels.”
“Enabling Wumbo was our signal to the rest of the world that the Lightning Network is ready for the next step in its evolution,” states Lightning Labs.
This evolution involves a world where Lightning nodes are as “ubiquitous as the TCP/IP driver,” and every device from the mobile phone, laptop, desktop, router, and network switch can send/receive payments, authenticate themselves, and send end-to-end encrypted messages without a trusted third party.
Just last week, Lightning Labs also added accounting reports to the suite of tools for Ind to help users track sats. And with Wumbo and Faraday, it expects more and more companies to enable Lightning for its users.
Blockstream, which maintains the c-lightning implementation, also updated its tech stack in the form of channel management and routing tools.
The latest version 0.9.1 of c-lightning improves the likelihood of larger transactions to find a route between the sender and receiver while removing the bugs to make the process more efficient.
Additionally, with multifundchannel plugin, it is now possible to open multiple channels with a single transaction.
