Lightning Network : Over 1,000 Mainnet Payment Channels

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Source : https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

Behind the scenes Bitcoin development continues to roll forward without any regard for market movements, and one much-anticipated technology — the Lightning Network (LN) — has quietly passed a major milestone.

Lightning Network will make network congestion disappear, reduce mempool size, by moving transactions off the main blockchain onto the second-layer LN protocol. Using payment channels, LN users will be able to make near-instant transactions at virtually no cost, which will ultimately make Bitcoin an attractive medium of exchange for transactions of ALL sizes.

Already 429 nodes running LN software on the mainnet, for comparison, bcash - the fourth-largest scamcoin by market cap — has 1171 active nodes (excluding duplicate and non-listening clients), less than three times more that of the ALPHA-stage LN.