While Bitcoin (BTC) has remained volatile for most of September 2021, the developments taking place with the Bitcoin Lightning network are going strong.
As we know, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is a “layer 2” payments protocol designed atop the Bitcoin blockchain network. There’s an exponential growth in the Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity which has now surged past 2,9000 BTC, as per data on Glassnode.
This year of 2021, in particular, has been very strong considering the Bitcoin Lightning Network growth. Since the beginning of 2021, the Lightning Network capacity has surged by 160%, while the number of active nodes and the number of channels have grown nearly by 100%.
As of press time, the number of active nodes on the BTC Lightning Network is 15,697 while the number of active channels has shot past 73,000. On the other hand, some big companies like Twitter are looking forward to taking benefit of these developments.
Twitter Can Boost Lightning Network Use
Last week, Twitter announced the Bitcoin tipping feature making it one of the biggest BTC adoption news by a tech giant. Interestingly, Twitter will be leveraging the Bitcoin Lightning Network to facilitate payments and BTC tipping.
To facilitate its Bitcoin tipping feature, Twitter has partnered with payments application Strike built atop the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The Twitter announcement read:
“People can now seamlessly tip with Bitcoin using Strike – a payments application built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network that allows people to send and receive Bitcoin.
People in the eligible markets will have to sign up for a Strike account and add their Strike username to receive Bitcoin tips over the Lightning Network. You can use any Bitcoin Lightning wallet to send tips to someone’s Strike account”.
As Bitcoin adoption continues to increase, the Bitcoin Lightning network will play a crucial role in increasing the Bitcoin utility. The participation of such big players will further boost the adoption curve.
