⚡️ The Lightning Network is crucial to Bitcoin’s scalability, but traditional metrics like capacity & node count offer an incomplete picture of its true potential. The key to understanding network health? Max Flow.
🔑 Max Flow measures how much value can reliably flow through the network, considering available liquidity. For decades, this concept has optimized industries like telecommunications, logistics, and transportation. Now, it’s doing the same for the Lightning Network.
📊 While traditional metrics focus on nodes or channels, Max Flow highlights payment reliability—the true measure of network performance. As the graphic shows, payment reliability changes with payment size. Lightning is particularly suited for micropayments today.
💡 By focusing on Max Flow, we move beyond capacity metrics and gain deeper insight into how well the network is routing payments. This gives a much clearer view of Lightning’s performance.
💸 One of the most exciting aspects of Max Flow? As Bitcoin’s price rises, the capacity for larger transactions on Lightning increases without any infrastructure changes. A $10K payment when BTC is $100K is just as easy as a $5K payment when BTC was $50K.
🔍 Instead of focusing on how many nodes exist, the question becomes: how well is liquidity being used? Max Flow helps identify where improvements can be made to ensure Bitcoin payments flow efficiently, no matter the size.
🚀 Max Flow isn’t just another metric—it’s the future of Lightning Network optimization. Investors and node operators who adopt this metric now will be well-positioned to scale the network and capitalize on its potential. 🌐
💡 Learn more about how Max Flow is revolutionizing the way we assess the Lightning Network: https://cryptoslate.com/the-metric-that-matters-for-the-lightning-network/
While force closes tend to get the most attention, channel opens pay more fees to miners in total than all channel closes.
Lightning channels are clearly solving a problem because the urgency to start new lightning channels is greater than the urgency to close them.
(w/o FCs) 
(w/ FCs) 
#lightningnetwork #statistics #bitcoin
#Bitcoin #sats #lightning
Starting simple, here an invoice from BitcoinJungleCR, a custodial lightning wallet:
In the Routing Info is a Pubkey, revealing a well-connected 28 BTC capacity node that will convey the payment to the "private" node destination.
Our New Research: "Channel Balance Interpolation in the Lightning Network via Machine Learning" decimates the tired and risky approach of probing to find a reliable payment route.
Combining crowdsourced data and machine learning means reliable payments on LN with less spam.
We're applying this methodology to a new pathfinding-as-a-service feature that is showing extremely promising early results.
We're looking for exchanges, rewards programs, or play-to-earn with high outbound payment volume to put our pathfinding service to a real-world test.
To learn more about our research or to join us as part of our payment operations solution, be sure to visit: 