The Bitcoin Lightning Network has marked another huge milestone. Total public capacity exceeded 5,000 BTC for the first time in history, along with the growing trend of 2022. This new milestone pushes the capabilities and promise of the Bitcoin Lightning network further. As always, there was a reason behind the great pressure.
Bitcoin development is increasing
The continued development of the bitcoin network is a big part of why the digital asset remains so valuable today. Being the largest decentralized network in the space, there are always developers looking for new ways to leverage the bitcoin network’s offerings and push it further into the mainstream.
Lightning Labs is a development company that continues to have a strong focus on bitcoin development and has been behind the all-time high Lightning network capacity. The developer had expanded River Financial and Loop’s channel capacity, allowing the network to accommodate even more BTC. It also follows the introduction of the new Taro protocol, the code of which was posted last week for public dissection, as Lightning Labs continues to expand the capabilities of the bitcoin network.
Lightning network reaches new milestone | Source: Arcane Research
The Bitcoin Lightning network is also gaining popularity among BTC users. MicroStrategy, which has a large investment position in BTC, made headlines when it posted a vacancy looking for a full-time lightning network engineer. Apparently, the company is looking for a Lightning network-based SaaS platform for e-commerce and business use cases.
The Taro protocol mentioned above is working to make it possible for developers to mint, send and receive new tokens on the bitcoin blockchain. Take the Ethereum ERC tokens as an example. It will also expand the capabilities of NFTs on the bitcoin blockchain and enable the creation of stablecoins based on the bitcoin blockchain.
BTC price settles above $20,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
The Lightning Network is also increasingly used in crypto payment services due to its speed. El Salvador had adopted the Lightning network to make it easier to pay with BTC in the country and the digital payment provider Strike raised $80 million in September to expand its Lightning network-based payment solutions for merchants.
Layer 2 solutions such as the Lightning Network are also expected to become more important for the bitcoin network in the future. Cardano founder Charles Hoskison recently revealed that he expects the majority of BTC to likely exist outside the bitcoin network over the next five years and be packaged in these Layer 2 solutions.
Featured image from Coindesk, charts from Arcane Research and TradingView.com
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