[2019-09-26] Bitcoin Lightning Network hits 10,000 nodes

[bL4nkcode]

Well,

Bitcoin Lightning Network hits 10,000 nodes

The number of nodes on the Bitcoin Lightning Network has risen above 10,000 for the first time.
According to data site 1ml, the number of Lighting nodes has increased by 3.1 percent over the last 30 days—to reach an all-time high of 10,000.

https://decrypt.co/9662/bitcoin-lightning-network-hits-10000-nodes

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[Carlton Banks]

hmmm, that's an interesting statistic


these 10,000 Lightning nodes must be public nodes, otherwise it's impossible to know that number (other than doing a worldwide survey of... everyone. and believing everything they tell you )

but there are (supposedly) around 9,000 public Bitcoin nodes. So some people are running a private Bitcoin node with a public Lightning node?

I suspect this statistic counts all the Lightning nodes, whether they're non-forwarding Zap/Eclair wallets or Lightning full nodes. In which case, it's more nuanced a statistic than is being presented here. There is an implication, though, that there are more than 10,000 Lightning nodes in total, as non-public nodes are bound to exist (we know from the DNS seeders that there are around 60,000 Bitcoin nodes if non-public nodes are included, there's no reliable way to get the same figures for Lightning though).

[1Referee]

Not surprising at all. Despite all the critics only highlighting the decrease in liquidity, the Lightning ecosystem is growing stronger ever single day. I'm pretty sure that the critics are either nocoiners trying to trash talk Bitcoin, or the altcoin camps that worry about their projects because you can't compete with Bitcoin anymore in terms of speed and cost.

Benefit of the price going down is that it will make people focus back on development and whatnot, so I expect more liquidity to flow into Lightning in the forthcoming months. Another aspect is that merchants have less incentive to cash out to the mainchain, which means less outflow of existing liquidity and more inflow of new liquidity.

[BitHodler]

Considering that most of the regular public full nodes have now turned into hybrid LN nodes, the growth is largely calculated in at this point, so don't expect it to rocket up to 15 or even 20k nodes any time soon.

I would love to see how much actual transactional use there is on LN, but that's near impossible to measure, which at the same time provides people additional privacy they don't have on-chain, so to good outweighs the 'bad'.

[Carlton Banks]

I would love to see how much actual transactional use there is on LN, but that's near impossible to measure, which at the same time provides people additional privacy they don't have on-chain, so to good outweighs the 'bad'.

there is an indirect measure of Lightning use: liquidity. The liquidity should represent a slightly overoptimistic/speculative assessment of demand for Lightning transactions.

And it's fallen a little. But it will also not be a good indicator for much longer; once Lightning grows more, it will eventually become too large for every node to maintain a complete map of all the channels. At that point, if someone publishes figures about Lightning liquidity, the choice is either to believe what they say, or set up your own Lightning node that's configured to query+maintain the entire channel map.

And if you're thinking "just query the blockchain for the number of Lightning contracts", that won't work once taproot is used to write the script for Lightning contracts

[BitHodler]

At that point, if someone publishes figures about Lightning liquidity, the choice is either to believe what they say, or set up your own Lightning node that's configured to query+maintain the entire channel map.

I'm glad that as simple user of LN I won't have to worry about that too much. I'm perfectly happy using a third party client (which I have been for months) as long as they don't suddenly ask for KYC information.

If even these third party clients are no longer an option due to KYC restrictions, then sure, the best thing to do is to set up your own node with all bells and whistles included. You know what they say.... don't trust, verify.

And if you're thinking "just query the blockchain for the number of Lightning contracts", that won't work once taproot is used to write the script for Lightning contracts

What's your most optimistic call on when we could see the taproot proposal finally be implemented? And the same goes for Schnorr.

[Carlton Banks]

What's your most optimistic call on when we could see the taproot proposal finally be implemented? And the same goes for Schnorr.

Taproot+Schnorr are currently bundled together in 1 proposal. It's still in the mailing-list RFC ("request for comment") stage. Code is ready, but that's implementing the draft spec. There was a change to the spec agreed just recently, to give you an idea. Also, that's the actual cryptography code, plumbing that into the consensus stuff, the wallet code, and writing the activation logic are all yet to be completed. But the crpytographic stuff is the parts that need most scrutiny, so this way round is best.

I think the idea is to avoid the activation controversy this time, it's better to maintain stability, or at least public/market perception of it. How that's done exactly is unconfirmed, flag day activation I expect.


optimistic would be code inclusion in the Winter 2020 release (version 0.21.1), then activation flag day set 6 months out from that

Bottom line: possibly Schnorr+Taproot ready to use in June/July 2021. I hope that turns out to be conservative tbh.