Lightning Network, the second layer of Bitcoin payment protocol, saw considerable growth last year. In March 2018, Lightning Labs launched its first implementation in Lightning network. The other two projects that ACINQ and Blockstream developed respectively were followed by the end of March and the end of June.
Bitcoin (BTC) developers are working on the Lightning Network to assist Bitcoin scales. The digital currency Bitcoin Cash has implemented online scaling solutions.
The new Bitcoin standard for easy payment of lightning is the open source WebLN standard, which is now used to reduce the number of steps that the user needs to take to make payment, by Lightning Joule and Bluewallet, two of their most popular lightning wallets and applications such as the LightningSpin.
The highly anticipated solution of scaling currently enables the maximum capacity of 557,58 BTC transactions. This is equivalent to around USD 2.23 million, not a small amount, at current prices.
It should also be pointed out that over the last year the average number of channels per node has steadily grown. Every node now has almost eight channels.
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The standard written by the developer, William O’Beirne, is based on his work contributing to popular services for Ethereum, MyCrypto, and MyEtherWallet. This could appear a little strange because users of Bitcoin and Ethereum often appear as rivals, fighting on Twitter and discussing the merits of every cryptocurrency. But that does not appear to be of concern to O’Beirne.
Rick Falkvinge, a Swedish IT company entrepreneur, had a different opinion. He discussed legal liability for transactions handled using the Lightning Network. He pointed out that Lightning Network nodes have legal liability. If a user places funds on this LN with a different user, he begins to behave like a bank.
It is important to understand that the software is still beta when evaluating the Lightning Network The Lightning Network’s most remarkable growth metric seems to be the increasing number of active nodes and the nodes are gradually opening up new channels. It seems at best counterproductive and at worst disappointing to share the capacity of the Lightning Network without disclosing that 64 percent is controlled by one company.
Bitcoin’s lightning network is not only growing but also growing rapidly. Blockstream, a consortium that contributes to the Bitcoin lightning network, overcame the 500 BTC milestone just a couple of weeks ago.
According to recent reports, Lightning Network consists of 7,599 nodes and 39,357 channels. While Falkvinge criticized the Lightning Network, the solution grew in recent months.
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All that said, however, there are also some other standard lightning developers who are currently working to standardize how lightning is used on the web: W3C, the international organization that develops rules for the web to be followed by all browsers.
