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Lightning Network

Lightning Network Nodes Now Outnumber Bitcoin Cash Nodes

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Today marks another great day for the highly anticipated Lightning Network as the active node count has now surpassed that of Bitcoin Cash.  According to the most recent statistics, Bitcoin Cash has 1,286 active nodes compared to the Lightning Network's 1,347.  Given the infancy of the Lightning Network and the fact that it is still in its Beta testing stage, it is easy to see the growing demand for this game-changing protocol.

A Change is A-Comin'

The Lightning Network has managed to catapult its node count from 29 nodes in January to its current status of well over a thousand.  While there have been some discrepancies reported in the Lightning Network total node count, the difference was under 20 nodes and still places the Lightning Network node count firmly ahead of BCH.

LApps

There are many reasons for the speedy adoption of the Lightning Network.  Developers have been working around the clock to create LApps to accommodate the new protocol and earlier in the week the development team at Blockstream announced that they would be releasing six LApps in 6-days with one scheduled for release daily.  Developers have long steered the course of the cryptomarket and the excitement around this project is palpable.

FileBaazar

The first of these Lapps was released yesterday under the name FileBaazar.  This platform is designed to give content creators greater control over their creations and how they interact with their clients.  The FileBaazar platform allows clients to work directly with content providers on a Peer-to-Peer basis and forgo the dependence on advertisements to generate revenue.

More Decentralization

The Lightning Network is showing a good decentralization when compared to other blockchains such as Bitcoin Cash who currently shows the majority of their nodes being hosted on Alibaba out of China.  Decentralization has always been a core aspect of the Bitcoin community and Lightning Labs, the developers behind the Lightning Network, have been committed to transparency and remaining open source.

The Return of the King

The return of low transaction fees and speedy transfers has got many in the crypto industry predicting a big boom in BTC adoption over the coming year.  Altcoins that simply provided users larger block sizes, will soon be obsolete as they will no longer be providing a needed service to the market.  Bitcoiners have been rejoicing as the Lightning network continues to reach higher adoption levels and Lightning Labs continues to push the timetable to get this off-chain solution into the marketplace.

Lightning Strikes the Cryptomarket

The Lightning Network has been hailed by many as the cure-all for BTC's current scalability issues but there are still some developers who have voiced concerns over what they see as a rushed implementation of the network.  Lightning Labs has been carefully addressing these concerns and to-date the network is developing on schedule.  Now the only question is; will Lightning strike all of the BTC hard forks that flooded the market over the last few months?

What do you think Cryptonians?  Is the Lightning Network set to take out BTC clones? Or is there enough room for everyone in the marketplace?  Let us know in the comments below.