The Bitcoin Lightning Network’s ability to facilitate transactions continues to trend upwards, approaching all-time highs.
According to LookIntoBitcoin, a website that tracks lightning network statistics, the network can handle more than $210 million in transfers, or about 4,980 bitcoins ( BTC ).
This is close to the all-time high of $223 million reported on December 6. The Lightning Network reached its highest capacity ever in July, when approximately 5,400 BTC could be transferred across the network. In November last year, the metric almost reached a similar level again before falling slightly.
The Lightning Network has seen impressive growth in capacity since its inception in early 2018. Despite volatility in broader crypto market activity during the 2022-2023 bear market, the Layer 2 network continues to show a consistent upward trend. Proponents believe that the Lightning Network enables faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions and could be the key to greater adoption of Bitcoin payments in the retail sector.
Critics argue that the Lightning Network remains highly technical and difficult for average users to use and poses centralization risks due to its graph-based topology. Regardless, network capacity metrics suggest that developer and user activity is continuing even as the crypto industry faces headwinds.
While the dollar value of the largest lightning transfers is closely following last year’s peak, the stability of the upward trend indicates the growing legitimacy of Bitcoin’s layer 2 scaling solution. As adoption expands, the decentralized payment network looks set to challenge all-time high transfer capacity in the coming year. #加密货币传输 #闪电网络
