Total bitcoins held on the Lightning Network stay below record highs even though the total value held has set new highs.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network set a record high Monday as total capacity held in the protocol’s payment channels – sometimes referred to as “total value locked” (TVL) – reached $12.4 million.
- Two weeks ago, Lightning set the prior high of $12.37 million, surpassing the long-standing previous mark of $12.3 million that was reached in early July 2019 and lasted for 405 days.
- Bitcoin’s price appreciation has certainly helped boost Lightning’s TVL as the bellwether cryptocurrency has gained more than 30% since July.
- The total number of bitcoins held on Lightning sits at 1,060, up 24% so far this year, but still remains below the record high of 1,105 BTC set in early May 2019.
- Compared with the tens of millions of dollars pouring into Ethereum and related protocols because of the decentralized finance craze, Lightning’s growth may seem slow, but a variety of data underscores the network’s steady increase in activity.
- The number of publicly broadcasting nodes, for example, has steadily increased throughout the entire lifetime of the protocol. Currently more than 7,600 nodes are connected to payment channels, up 55% from January.
- In August, Lightning’s node count grew 26%, adding 1,581 nodes, representing the largest monthly percentage growth since April 2018 and the largest real monthly growth ever.
- Lightning Labs, the company building the most popular implementation of Lightning, LND, further quantified the network’s growth in a tweet shared earlier in August. Over 70 companies are currently building on LND, the company said.
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