Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) saw its layer-two scalability solution Lightning Network increase its payment volume by over 400% after major players decided to adopt the technology to allow for near-instant and almost free Bitcoin transactions.
What Happened: A recent report by Arcane Research shows the number of payments that took place on the Lightning Network over the last year doubled compared to the previous one while the value of the payments quadrupled.
The increase follows applications like El Salvador’s official Bitcoin wallet Chivo Wallet and United States-based payment application Block Inc's (NYSE:SQ) financial services application CashApp adoption of the protocol in early February.
See Also: How to get free crypto
The Context: Arcane pointed out that the total value locked does not work as a metric of the Lightning Network development due to private channels and invisible nodes that result in the network appearing smaller than it is in reality.
The market research firm argues that payment volume is a much better-suited metric to judge how this ecosystem is growing.
According to Arcane's research in August 2021, about 100,000 users had access to Lightning payments. In March of this year, over 80 million gained access to this system, showing an unprecedented rate of growth of the potential user base.
About half of the value originated from direct transactions between individuals; almost one-third from exchange withdrawals and deposits; and the remaining 20% were payments to vendors.
BTC Price Action: Bitcoin is down 3.7% over 24 hours at $39,780.
