Few Latinos take advantage of Bitcoin Lightning payment routing – CVBJ

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Highlights:

Latin America has barely 0.83% of the nodes in the Lightning network.

Routing payments can generate passive revenue for node operators.

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network continues to experience steady growth, but this momentum is not reflected much in Latin America, where stronger infrastructure appears to be at a disadvantage. This at least when purchasing the number of public nodes that operate by regions.

At the time of writing, there are 38,814 nodes on the Lightning network around the world, of which 17,136 are nodes with public IP, according to the map from development company ACINQ, which originated the. Eclair implementation and the Phoenix wallet.

This ACINQ explorer allows you to clearly see that there are a much lower number of public nodes located in Latin America compared to other regions such as North America or Europe.

The data presented by the explorer ACINQ takes into account the public IP announced by the node and may not be exact, as the company points out on its website, however, it offers an estimated view regarding the geolocation of the nodes of the net.

The image presented by explorer ACINQ reveals that Latin America has few nodes on the Lightning network. Source: ACINQ lightning explorer.

In any case, a survey carried out by analysts from the University of Vienna and the company Blockstream, indicates that indeed most of the nodes of the Lightning Network are located in North America, with 44.8%, and in Europe. with 43.1%.

The remaining nodes are located in Asia with 6.2%, Oceania with 2.2% and, finally, South America and Africa, each with 0.8% and 0.6%.

Among the Latin American countries most active in Lightning, Brazil stands out with 9 nodes and 120 channels; also Mexico with 3 nodes and 46 canals; while Colombia appears with 2 nodes and 46 channels. Venezuela has 3 nodes with 8 channels; Argentina shows 7 knots with 9 channels; Peru, 1 node with 2 channels; and Chile with 4 nodes with 4 channels. As a Hispanic country, it is worth mentioning Spain, which has 29 nodes with 131 operating channels, according to data from 1ml.com.

Running a Lightning Node Can Be Profitable

The lesser presence of geolocated nodes in a region may be due to a lack of disclosure of incentives for businesses and individuals to manage nodes, even though they may route payments to generate revenue, which is food for thought.

A well-connected node can provide passive income. Alex Bosworth, a liquidity leader at Lightning Labs, for example, made up to $ 30,000 in six months of routing payments.

Bosworth has been one of the most active developers and promoters of network advancements, being one of the first active nodes of the network. This gives it an advantage by having a greater number of connections and therefore being an attractive node to route payments. By this we mean that while operating a Lightning node can be lucrative, making the necessary connections takes work.

It must be taken into account that the more nodes there are connected, the better the payments will be routed to another point in the network with the fewest hops, so that they are more efficient and reduce the costs of routing.

It is worth noting that in Latin America the number of active public nodes has not increased, especially when their number has increased by at least 100% in the past year according to data from Bitcoin Visuals. It is evident that the number of nodes has increased little as adoption in the region explodes.

As reported by CriptoNoticias last October, El Salvador has doubled the volume of payments on the Lightning network by adopting bitcoin as legal tender. Additionally, Brazil has a similar version to the community that sparked interest in bitcoin in the Central American country.

At Bitcoin Beach Brazil, they aim to create a “sustainable economic ecosystem” based on the first of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, the community manages its own node and highlights that among the benefits of doing so: helping to maintain a secure network, while reducing dependency on the use of third-party Lightning Network servers.

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