On Tuesday, March 13, the number of active gcd Lightning Network (LN) in the core network of bitcoin crossed the mark of 1000. This is indicated by the corresponding tracker.
So, at the time of publication in mannete bitcoin had been put in operation 1006 Lightning-nod and was opened in 1863 of the channel.
Major milestone! We just passed 1,000 nodes with over 1,880 channels running on mainnet lightning. #bitcoin #bitcoinisscaling #LightningNetwork 🎉👏⚡ pic.twitter.com/QZhDlBHGXp
— Armin van Bitcoin ⚡ (@ArminVanBitcoin) 11 March 2018.
Earlier, the magazine ForkLog details of how Lightning Network may be the answer bitcoin’s low fee altcoins. In turn, the developers are convinced that the full activation of the Protocol can be one of the most important events in the history of the existence of the “digital gold”.
This became especially relevant on the background of a sharp increase in 2017 commissions in the network of the bitcoin: in addition to instant payments without waiting for confirmations, and potentially a higher level of user privacy one of the main advantages of LN is called the reduction of transaction costs.
In December last year was made another important step towards the implementation of LN: developer Bitrefill Alex Bosworth reported that Lightning made its first transaction in the core network of bitcoin, adding with Protocol own phone bill.
Mainnet Lightning Network paying my current phone bill with actual funds on Mainnet @bitrefill. Speed: Instant. Fee: Zero. Future: Almost Here. pic.twitter.com/futhn502Lp
— Alex Bosworth ☇ (@alexbosworth) 28 Dec 2017
“Speed: instantly. Commission: zero. The future almost arrived,”he wrote then.
It is worth noting that even in mid-January, the number of active LN-nod in mannete bitcoin was only 35.
The first Lightning-transaction with zero Commission in the Litecoin was implemented in September 2017. In addition, at the end of February 2018 cryptomnesia Laszlo Heinitz known as the first person in the world to buy material goods for bitcoins, he repeated the experiment, but with the help of the Protocol LN.
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