Ryan Gentry, business development lead at Lightning Labs, discusses the latest updates on the Lightning Network, the layer 2 solution for Bitcoin. Highlights:
how Lightning Network is bringing Bitcoin to the masses through partnerships with Twitter, Substack, and Paxful
what the significance of El Salvador adopting Bitcoin means for the Lightning Network
how many nodes are running Lightning Network nodes
why the capacity on the Lightning Network has grown rapidly
how Ryan has seen interest in Lightning has changed since the El Salvador announcement earlier this year
what stage of adoption Ryan thinks the Lightning Network is
why Lightning Network total-value-locked should not be compared to Ethereum L2s or other DeFi protocols
how Lightning Network differs from DeFi
what metric Ryan believes is the best way to measure adoption on Lightning Network
how El Salvador has changed the types of transactions being made on Lightning Network
what’s next for Lightning Network and how Lightning micropayments could affect how podcasts (like Unchained!) are distributed
Perfect timing and place for a Lightning Network Conference. In less than a week, Bitcoin will be legal tender in El Salvador. The Lightning Network was instrumental for this to happen. The real-life case study for the Lightning Network is El Zonte AKA Bitcoin Beach. And in Mid-November, all of those factors will collide in an event aptly titled “Adopting Bitcoin.”
Related Reading | How Big Is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network? The Answer Will Surprise You
This Lightning Network conference comes with a call-to-action as its unofficial slogan, “Unite, focus, collab!” And, by the looks of Adopting Bitcoin’s official Twitter, the tribe responded to the call and will attend en masse.
Unite, focus, collab! ⚡⚡⚡
“Adopting Bitcoin – A Lightning Summit 2021” #adopt21 brings together the Bitcoin and Lightning communities in El Salvador this November
The focus: transitioning 6+ million people onto the Lightning Network!
What Characteristics Does This Lightning Network Conference Have?
According to “Adopting Bitcoin‘s” website, their purpose:
“… is bringing together the Bitcoin and Lightning community in San Salvador and El Zonte to create connections and foster the future of money and payments in the Central American republic.”
The Lightning Network Conference has the following characteristics:
The team behind the Bitcoin Beach Wallet, Galoy, produced the conference.
“Adopting Bitcoin” is a not-for-profit event.
The organizers will donate 100% to support Lightning Network development.
The Lightning Network conference will be both in English and in Spanish.
“Adopting Bitcoin” will be live-streamed.
They’ll dedicate Tuesday and Wednesday to hard-core conferencing.
Thursday they’ll finish the peregrination by visiting the place that started it all, El Zonte. “We will have an organized Bitcoin Bazaar 10a-4p…. with kiosks, stands and food stalls anchored at / near Hope House,” said Galoy’s Co-Founder.
Tuesday and Wednesday are full conference days in San Salvador.
Thursday is more casual in El Zonte. We will have an organized Bitcoin Bazaar 10a-4p…. with kiosks, stands and food stalls anchored at / near Hope House.
The Lightning Network conference is for “early adopters only.” Tickets can only be purchased with bitcoin over the Lightning Network.
“Adopting Bitcoin” is for “developers, businesses and general enthusiasts to network and form in-person connections.”
Adopting Bitcoin: Lightning Summit in El Salvador. Dates: 16 – 18 November 2021. Tickets can only be paid on the #Bitcoin#LightningNetwork. All proceeds of the conference will be donated to the development of the Lightning Network. https://t.co/vZzQb6MOy9 pic.twitter.com/ivizhyD960
— Bitcoin LightningNetwork+ News ⚡️ (@BTC_LN) August 30, 2021
“Adopting Bitcoin’s” Line Up
Tuesday and Wednesday, the party is in San Salvador’s Sheraton Presidente. Both days contain “Lightning 101” workshops. Among the star lecturers are:
Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation; podcaster extraordinaire Stephan Livera; Bitnob’s Bernard Parah, from Nigeria, one of the protagonists of this historic transaction; “Bitcoin En Español’s” host Camila Campton; Mónica Taher, Tech & Economic International Affairs for El Salvador; Bitcoin Beach’s Mike Peterson, and Paxful’s Ray Youssef.
Full line-up in the Lightning Network Conference ‘s website.
On Thursday 18, the party moves to El Zonte and ends with a literal Taproot Activation Party in El Tunco. For a video tour of both towns, check this mini-documentary out.
BTC price chart for 08/31/2021 on Cexio | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
About Galoy, Organizers Of The Lightning Network Conference
According to their official website, “Galoy offers easy to use Bitcoin ‘Banking-as-a-Service’ (BaaS) products.” They are responsible for the self-referential official wallet for the Bitcoin Beach project. “In October 2020, we launched our branded “Bitcoin Beach” Lightning Wallet in El Zonte.” Galoy describes itself as:
“… a B2B company, serving organizations that embrace Bitcoin as money. We build on the Bitcoin Protocol and the Layer 2 Lightning Network, utilizing the tools created by the team at Lightning Labs.”
Related Reading | Are The Lightning Network’s Almost-Free Transactions The Killer App BTC Needed?
And now, they’re contributing to the Bitcoin ecosystem with this not-for-profit Lightning Network Conference in El Salvador. One that requires that you actually use the novel network to purchase the coveted ticket. And donates all proceeds to Lightning development.
Nice.
Featured Image: Adopting Bitcoin's logo | Charts by TradingView
The Lightning Network is one of the most bullish developments that the Bitcoin ecosystem has seen so far. And all the available metrics point up, a healthy and vibrant network is brewing. However, investor Kevin Rooke took a deeper look and found out that the Lightning Network is probably even bigger than previously thought. “Inaccurate comparisons and privacy preserving features make it hard to truly understand how big the Lightning Network is.”
Related Reading | Bitcoin Lightning Network Reaches Record Capacity
What does Rooke mean by that? Let’s find out.
The Lightning Network By The Numbers
A casual look at popular analytics platform 1ml tells us that, at the time of writing, The Lightning Network is composed of 24,688 nodes, 64,577 channels, and the network capacity is 2,272.89 BTC. All of those numbers are up. However, “The Lightning Network is not a borrowing protocol, an AMM, or a store of value. Furthermore, the idea that Bitcoin is “locked” on the Lightning Network is misleading at best.”
There are a number of DeFi protocols that have a much higher number of BTC “locked,” and people mistakenly compare that number to the Lightning Network ‘s capacity. In DeFi, usually, the funds are in fact locked and can’t be touched until the contract in question runs its course. In Lightning, things are quite different:
As explained in the book Mastering the Lightning Network, funds that are added to the Lightning Network are not locked, they are unleashed. As soon as a new Lightning channel is opened, those funds can be sent anywhere on the Lightning Network in an instant, and for almost no cost.
And speaking about channels, Kevin Rooke talked about them in an “investor letter” dated June 28th:
There are currently over 51,800 channels routing payments between 22,000 nodes, and 21% of those Lightning Network channels were created in the last 30 days.
On the surface, 21% monthly channel growth seems impressive, but new channel creation is a slightly misleading metric as nodes frequently open and close new channels.
A more accurate measure of growth is that the total number of channels on the Lightning Network is up by 10.8%, or over 5,000 channels in the last month.
Compare that to the more recent figure that we gave you at the beginning of the section and note how the number of channels grew in just a month and a half. That’s not all, take into account that:
Some nodes don’t want their channels to be included in the public Lightning Network graph, and instead choose to open ‘unadvertised’ or ‘private’ channels.
BTC price chart for 08/13/2021 on FTX | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
Privacy Doesn’t Let Us See How Much Money Goes Through Lightning
Most of the transactions that take place inside the Lightning Network are private. Only at the time of settlement between two parties are the final numbers forever registered into the Bitcoin blockchain. That means it’s impossible to know exactly how much money is going through Lightning on any given day. Or in total.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Community Celebrates as Crucial Lightning Network Project Launches
However, Rooke estimates that “annual on-chain volume is almost 6x higher than the value locked into the Bitcoin network, despite the relatively high transaction fees and slow block times that make payments cumbersome.” That’s on the main Bitcoin blockchain. On the other hand:
The Lightning Network is designed for making fast and inexpensive payments, so if $85 million of Bitcoin is already on the Lightning Network, it would make sense for annual payment volume to be at least 6x higher, or at least $510M.
That’s a bare minimum. And things are just getting started. In September, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law goes into effect and the whole country will start using the Lightning Network. And take into account that roughly a quarter of El Salvador’s GDP comes from remittances, so it’s not a stretch to think that Salvadoreans all over the world will start using it as well. Add to that Jack Dorsey’s projects, both Square and Twitter are looking into Lightning integration.
In fact, Dorsey published this tweet yesterday:
Agreed.
Every account on Twitter being able to link to a Lightning wallet however…
