In less than three weeks, usage of the Kraken Lightning Network become the sixth largest node on the Lightning network, in terms of transaction capacity.
According to a tweet by Pierre Rochard, head of product at Kraken:
Since launching Lightning ⚡️ at Kraken just three weeks ago:
→ 2,500 #BTC deposits and withdrawals
→ #6 highest capacity node on the network
→ Routing 3k forwards earned 1.6 million satsOnly getting started!
— Pierre Rochard (@pierre_rochard) April 18, 2022
since launching the Network less than 21 days ago, Kraken’s Lightning node has processed over 2,5k Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals through the Kraken channels. The Node has also routed over 3k transactions, netting the exchange 1.6M sats in rewards, at the moment equivalent about $657.
The BTC Lightning Network has become popular of late, perhaps not the least since El Salvador accepted bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021. As reported recently, Lightning payment volume has increased 400% in a year.
While regular BTC transactions are limited by block times and can face high transaction fees, the Lightning Network enables immediately settlement and low fees when users transfer BTC to or from each other. For Kraken, enabling Lightning transfers has opened a faster and cheaper way to top up Bitcoin and/or Lightning accounts for all customers.
The Lightning Network can process millions of transactions per sec thanks to its payment channels that are opened and closed on BTC blockchain. While open, these channels do not publish intermediate transactions to the blockchain, holding them off-chain.
These off-chain channels remain secured by the BTC’s multisig and timelocking features. As Kraken’s announcement, the Lightning ecosystem is quickly growing and there are numerous open-source and free wallet solutions. For example, BTCPay Server enables Lightning payments for merchants, greatly improving the BTC checkout flow.
Now, Kraken has 548 Lightning channels with a total capacity of around 11 billion sats whereas the biggest channel holds about 500M sats. The whole network, there are now just over 16k channels all around the world, holding almost 3,700 BTC
FelixMittermeier képe a Pixabay -en.
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