European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp announced on Monday (July 8) that it has launched its own Lightning node in order to help with the growth of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN).

Bitstamp says that it is “very excited” about the Lightning Network, and believes that “it is the next step for Bitcoin and one of the payment systems of the future.”

According to the exchange, the Lightning Network offers the following benefits: instant payments; low fees and minimums; and scalability.

Bitstamp defines a Lightning Network node as the “software that connects to the Lightning Network to send and receive bitcoin from other nodes.” The Lightning Network consists of these nodes and their interconnections.

Bitstamp decided to launch its own Lightning node because it believes that the more Lightning nodes that there are, the stronger the Lightning Network since (a) the network only stays alive as long as nodes are online and (b) when nodes open payment channels, we get an increase in the total liquidity of the network.

Here are the details of Bitstamp’s Lightning node:

  • Node Name: ln.bitstamp.net [Bitstamp]
  • Node IP Address: 3.122.40.122:9735
  • Node Public Key: 02a04446caa81636d60d63b066f2814cbd3a6b5c258e3172cbdded7a16e2cfff4c

At press time, here are some stats about Bitstamp’s Lightning node:

  • Channel Count: 157 / 38589
  • Connected Nodes: 170 / 5607
  • Node Capacity: 7.95531858 BTC / 950.33933589 BTC

According to the latest data from Lightning Network monitoring site 1ML, in the past 30 days, here are the changes to Lightning Network Statistics:

  • number of Lightning nodes: 8,986 (+3.51%)
  • number of Lightning channels: 34,417 (-1.1%)
  • network capacity: 939.80 BTC (-2%)

In other Lightning-related news:

  • On July 5, Russian crypto news outlet Forklog reported that Bitcoin wallet Electrum will be adding support for the Lightning Network (LN) in the near future. This functionality is reportedly being added as part of an upcoming major upgrade of the Electrum wallet, which is expected to arrive before the end of July.
  • On June 25, Bitcoin Magazine reported that Bitrefill’s new Thor API, Recharge, “gives Coinbase users the ability to easily leverage the full capabilities of the Lightning Network from the comfort of their Coinbase accounts.”
  • On June 19, Lightning Labs announced the availability of its Lightning App on the Bitcoin mainnet for iOS (alpha version via Testflight) and Android, “making it the first mainnet app on all major mobile and desktop platforms” (the desktop version of the Lightning App is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux).

Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pixabay.com