The adoption of Lightning Network, the Bitcoin (BTC) network of fast payment channels, is growing exponentially this year. Now, Lightning Network has more public nodes than Ripple, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC), taken separately. At the end of August, a Twitter user reviewed how Lightning Network has more public nodes than Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchains altogether. The tweet sparked controversy, as the user gave no proof of this claim.
Lightning Network surpassed Ripple, Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchains regarding public nodes
However, a recent investigation shows that the user’s assertion was not entirely true as the Lightning Network has more public nodes than Litecoin (LTC), Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) networks, but only if we take them separately and compare them with Bitcoin (BTC)’s Lightning Network.
While in the Litecoin, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash blockchains it is free to run a network node, in Lightning Network (LN), on the other hand, each node involves a minimum electrical expense and some Satoshis that are blocked as a guarantee for creating channels. Despite this, the public nodes of LN in Bitcoin (BTC) amount to 2522 (with a 10% increase in the last 30 days), according to statistics of 1ML.
The number of public nodes of Litecoin (LTC) is 261, while Ripple has 789. On the other hand, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network is closer to LN with 2124.
Although these numbers are quite encouraging, it is difficult to determine precisely how many Lightning Network nodes currently exist
According to an article published recently, the number of nodes shown in the latest Lightning Network’s graphs could be wrong, due to several factors. The first of these is the node view as a node generates its network graph, which may be limited, but still uses it in its function. Therefore, it is possible that a node does not offer a view of the whole network.
Similarly, it is currently recommended that wallets execute their nodes privately. Thus these private nodes are not visible to the network graph and are not calculated in the statistics.
Lightning Network, which already has its first physical node available on the market, currently has about 12,000 channels, according to the 1ML report. The network capacity is now at 116.50 BTC or about $756,000 according to the current price of Bitcoin (BTC).
