Lightning Network Up 161% Since January; What’s Driving Its Growth?

The Lightning Network, a layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, has seen a robust amount of activity since Twitter announced adding support for bitcoin payment features including Lightning wallets.

New nodes and channels on the Lightning Network have increased 23.68 percent and 22.24 percent respectively, signalling a fast-paced adoption for the protocol.

At the time of writing, there were 27,188 nodes running on the network, of which 15,974 had active payment channels. This respectively represents a 5.43 percent and 6.04 percent 24-hour increase. The number of new channels kicked off this week with 74,163, an 8.4 percent increase in 24 hours.

Strike API to Allow Borderless, Instant Payments Over Twitter

Digital wallet Strike – built atop the layer-2 network – recently announced its integration to Twitter with the Strike API platform, allowing Twitter users in the US and El Salvador to receive tips through their strike accounts.

This is part of Twitter’s experiment to deal with crypto asset transactions, starting with iOS users. Apparently, this feature will spread to Android users in coming weeks.

When you take one of the world’s largest social internet networks and you combine it with the world’s best open monetary network, Twitter accidentally becomes one of the best remittance experiences in the world.

Jack Mallers, Zap CEO

Remittances constitute over 20 percent of El Salvador’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as many Salvadoreans work overseas to send money to their families staying in the country. As Crypto News Australia reported earlier this month, adopting bitcoin and its network could save El Salvador US$400 million a year in remittances.

The Lightning Network has proven to be an efficient scaling solution for slow BTC deposits. This year, crypto exchange OKEx integrated the Lightning Network into its platform to allow faster and cheaper BTC withdrawals and deposits.