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. Nodes are the computers who help to keep the network running.

At its core, the Lightning Network is a decentralized system for instant and high-volume Bitcoin micropayments—with payments as low as 1 satoshi (worth $0.0001). Bitcoin transactions, on the other hand, can take an hour to be confirmed. It’s regarded as one of the key ways Bitcoin will be able to scale to support millions of payments and users per day.

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. Which is small compared to Bitcoin’s 100,000-odd nodes, but significant for the network.

Lighting Network nodes pass transactions through payment channels, receiving a small fee from doing so. They also behave slightly differently to nodes on the main Bitcoin blockchain, known as a layer one part of the network.

Once the Bitcoin…