Behind the "Salvadorans" embracing Bitcoin, the Lightning Network is quietly growing

On June 6, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced at the 2021 Bitcoin Conference in Miami that Bitcoin would become the country's legal tender, giving the entire crypto world "the biggest boost this year." On June 9, the Salvadoran government officially announced that the Bitcoin bill had been passed, and Bitcoin would officially become the country's legal tender in September. Also in September, the e-wallet Chivo will be launched, with a pre-deposit of $30 in Bitcoin for each user. The Salvadoran authorities have deployed infrastructure such as Bitcoin ATMs, and have even sought help from the World Bank to build a Bitcoin payment system.
Cryptocurrency may be attractive to some countries, but one thing worth noting is that the congestion of the Bitcoin network cannot meet the needs of a country with a population of more than six million. What is a reliable solution to the Bitcoin payment problem? Perhaps El Salvador has already found the answer.
Zap Solutions' Lightning Network wallet Strike said it had a significant number of users in El Salvador a week after the fiat currency message was released; on June 25, a Twitter user said that about 20,000 Salvadoran residents traded Bitcoin through the Lightning Network in the past week, with a total transaction fee of less than $5. Compared with traditional Bitcoin on-chain transactions, the Lightning Network is faster and has lower transaction fees.

The above picture shows the transaction fee under traditional payment methods (unit: US dollars), and the picture below shows the payment fee of the Lightning Network (unit: Satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin)
The origin of the Lightning Network is to solve the congestion problem of the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin development team came up with an idea to build a second-layer transaction network on the Bitcoin main chain, namely the Lightning Network. The specific principle is: both parties to the transaction pledge a part of their funds to a multi-signature address, and the funds can only be withdrawn when both parties provide their private keys at the same time. In the Lightning Network, the transaction process between the two parties will not be recorded on the chain. Only the final result, that is, a transaction, will be recorded on the main chain. This is equivalent to only queuing once, which greatly reduces the process and handling fees of on-chain accounting.
The earliest terminal of the Lightning Network appeared in March 2018, and the Lightning Network became known to most people when Twitter user Hodlonaut launched the "Lightning Flame" campaign in the first quarter of 2019, which used Lightning Network payments. Lightning Network wallets in the same period included Satoshi, Breez, Blue, and Eclair. Currently, the Lightning Network terminals with a large user base include c-lightning and Eclair.
The original Lightning Network had shortcomings such as uneven node distribution, weak network risk resistance, and privacy. The upgraded versions of the Lightning Network c-lightning V0.10.0 and Eclai V0.5.0 include the following updates:
The development and expansion capabilities of the protocol, such as c-lightning's dual funding channels, Éclair's multi-path payments and cluster mode, etc.
The gap between potential privacy attributes and actual privacy attributes, such as c-lightning launched MuSig2, a Bitcoin multi-signature solution compatible with Taproot, and Eclai launched the Watchdog function to detect whether the data is safe.
According to data provided by Bitcoin Visuals, the number of Bitcoin Lightning Network nodes increased from 10,000 on April 8 to over 20,000 on May 9, and users witnessed its phenomenal growth within a month. Of course, this is also inseparable from the positive comments of various celebrities in public channels, such as Musk saying that "the Lightning Network is currently needed to process transactions" and Jack Dorsey saying that "it is only a matter of time before the Lightning Network is integrated into Twitter or BlueSky".
Currently, most exchanges, crypto wallets, e-commerce and social media payment channels support the Lightning Network. Bitcoin acceptance and the trend of the Lightning Network complement each other. It is like building a secondary road next to the main road. The development of the transportation network will only boost the growth of regional traffic volume and share the pressure at critical moments, rather than weakening the core function of the main road.
At the Miami conference, politicians from seven Latin American countries, including Paraguayan Congressman Carlitos Rejala, Panamanian Congressman Gabriel Silva, Argentine Neuquen Province Representative Francisco Sánchez, Brazilian Legislative Assembly elected member Fábio Maia Ostermann, Colombian Presidential Advisor and Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Jehudi Castro Sierra, Mexican Nuevo León Majority Senator Indira Kempis Martinez, and Ecuadorian Deputy Minister of Economic Inclusion Julio Eduardo Clavijo Acosta, also expressed interest in Bitcoin. African countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia have put Bitcoin legal tender on the agenda after Salvador. More and more countries are embracing Bitcoin, and more and more blockchain terminals are embracing the Lightning Network. The combination of the two will reawaken Bitcoin's payment attributes.