We just passed 2,000 nodes with over 5,650 open channels on mainnet. The total network capacity is now $150,000 USD. The universe keeps expanding at an accelerated rate. Send $BTC instantly for 1 sat / tx or less… yes… less. #LightningNetwork #bitcoin #segwit pic.twitter.com/PXeuPbdtA3

— Armin van Bitcoin (@ArminVanBitcoin) April 22, 2018

Nevertheless, at the moment the number of active Lightning nodes has decreased slightly – up to 1 684, but the number of open channels has increased to 7014. According to the data of the corresponding tracker , $ 163 712 is transferred to them.

It should be noted that the developer of Bitcoin Core Peter Todd has finally managed to carry out three successful Lightning transactions for $ 3, $ 5 and $ 40 through one payment channel from his Acinq-purse, which he reported on his Twitter.

My wallet has only one channel open, the default you get when you tell it to connect to Acinq's node, so this was a good test re: usability.

And actually, for testing I paid that bill with three payments – $3, $5, and $40 – and each one worked just as well as the rest.

— Peter Todd (@peterktodd) April 21, 2018

Todd previously criticized Lightning for criticizing the use of the “dangerous” C programming language because of the frequent segmentation errors that, in his opinion, lead to the failure of many payments.

He also stated that the Lightning protocol can be vulnerable to DoS attacks both at the P2P level and at the blockchain level.

A new tweet about successful transactions has become a kind of veiled praise for technology, despite Todd’s general skepticism on a number of fundamental questions regarding this solution to the problem of scaling bitcoin.