By 2030, the number of active users of the Bitcoin micro-payment network Lightning Network (LN) could exceed 700 million, according to Arcane Research analysts.
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Analysts noted that familiar metrics such as channel throughput do not reflect the true scale of the network’s growth.
In September, El Salvador legalized Bitcoin, the P2P platform Paxful integrated LN, and Twitter allowed content creators to receive donations in digital gold. Since then, the volume of Lightning Network payments has nearly doubled, while channel throughput has risen by only 26%, according to experts.
In September, the number of LN users rose by 11,164% — to 9.7 million from 87,000 in August. Arcane Research believes that El Salvador’s example may be followed by other countries with underdeveloped banking systems or dollarized economies. In such a scenario, the growth of this metric could become exponential.
\”The total population of these countries stands at 850 million people, of which 650 million currently lack access to the banking system. In a scenario where governments representing 10% of this population adopt Bitcoin by 2030, we would gain another 50 million LN users by the end of the decade,\” the report says.
Arcane Research believes this figure could be even higher, as LN could revolutionise the content industry. If consumers pay for content using the micropayment network, by 2030 the number of users could reach 700 million.
\”There is considerable overlap between users of services related to consuming different content . We chose to be conservative and select the higher figure — 1.1 billion gamers. […] 25% of the services they use require the transfer of money. […] Thus, the number of Lightning Network users will be from 25% to 100% of 1.1 billion. We followed a simple approach and took the midpoint — by 2030, around 700 million users,\” the report states.
Analysts at Glassnode also concluded that Twitter and El Salvador accelerated the development of the Lightning Network.
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