Arcane, a leading cryptocurrency market analysis firm, partnered with Opennode, a Lightning Network payment processor, and recently published “The State of Lightning: Bitcoin As A Payment Network.” This is the second volume of data released detailing adoption of Bitcoin’s layer two Lightning Network powered by Opennode.
The graph below hints towards a cautionary tale for the future of the U.S Dollar as rapid printing of the currency has unapologetically increased in supply.
Email was able to revolutionize a communications network over the internet and Bitcoin has the potential to revolutionize payments transactions across the same network.
Email served as a point of distribution and would push out to email service providers such as Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo.
Similarly, Bitcoin can be thought of as a point of distribution for money.
The fascinating part of the “other” 1% of payment volume is that even though it made up a small portion of the total value on the network, those transactions accounted for over half of the total transactions.
An expected curve in adoption rates would occur causing a plateau, which is what we’ve been seeing as 2022 has progressed.
The leaps in adoption from last year can be attributed to El Salvador adopting bitcoin by leveraging the Lightning Network, creating a drastic and immediate need for a large amount of Lightning channel.
The graph below gives a more detailed view of transaction volume and quantity dating back to 2020.
As of February 2022, the YoY stats saw increases in payments in USD by 410%, public capacity in BTC by 218%, public capacity in USD by 171%, as well as new nodes and channels by 127%.
As the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to grow more companies are expected to integrate the Lightning Network as a means of transferring value.
As Strike CEO Jack Mallers explained during his keynote at Bitcoin Conference 2022, hyper-bitcoinization is not required for the Lightning Network to experience exponential growth.