Bitcoin Lightning Network chain
Overview
The Lightning Network is a payment protocol layered on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, designed to let participants transact faster and more cheaply than settling every payment on-chain. Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja published the whitepaper in February 2015, and Lightning Labs launched the network in 2018, targeting the constraint that the Bitcoin blockchain can process only around 7 transactions per second against Visa's 24,000. It works through bidirectional payment channels secured by smart contracts: participants commit funds on-chain in a funding transaction, then exchange many off-chain transactions that update the split of those funds without broadcasting each one, settling the final balances on-chain when the channel closes. Payments settle in milliseconds to under a minute, routing uses onion encryption so intermediate nodes see a transaction but not its origin or destination, and some implementations support payments smaller than a single satoshi. Four main implementations exist: Lightning Network Daemon (LND) by Lightning Labs, Core Lightning (CLN) by Blockstream, Eclair by ACINQ, and the Lightning Development Kit (LDK) by Spiral. As of March 2026 the network hosted over 17,000 public nodes and approximately 40,000 public payment channels, with total capacity of around 4,900 BTC. The whitepaper appeared in February 2015 and the network launched in 2018. Despite early enthusiasm, reports on social media of failed transactions, security vulnerabilities and over-complication contributed to a decline in interest.
Within the DeFi Intel graph, Bitcoin Lightning Network connects to 7 tracked entities, most strongly to Strike, Lightspark, Voltage.
Relations
Top connections in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph (confidence-weighted, 7 of 7 total).
| Relation | Connected entity | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
deployed_on | Strike | 95% |
deployed_on | Lightspark | 95% |
deployed_on | Voltage | 95% |
deployed_on | BTCPay Server | 95% |
deployed_on | OpenNode | 95% |
deployed_on | River Financial | 90% |
deployed_on | Zaprite | 90% |
Frequently asked questions
What is Bitcoin Lightning Network?
Bitcoin Lightning Network is a l2_payment_channel tracked in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph. It is connected to 7 other tracked entities, most strongly to Strike, Lightspark, Voltage.
What type of entity is Bitcoin Lightning Network?
Bitcoin Lightning Network is classified as a l2_payment_channel (chain) in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph.
What is Bitcoin Lightning Network connected to?
In the DeFi Intel knowledge graph, Bitcoin Lightning Network is linked to 7 other tracked entities, most strongly to Strike, Lightspark, Voltage.
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