Cointelegraph reports that in the two years since its inception, the layer 2 Lightning Network of Bitcoin has grown by an estimated 1,212%, with approximately 6.6 million routed transactions in August 2023, a substantial increase from the 503,000 transactions routed in August 2021. River is a Bitcoin-only exchange that provides the data. Analyst Sam Wouters of River Research explained in a report dated 10 October that the increase in routed transactions, which involve the utilisation of more than two nodes to effectuate a transfer, transpired notwithstanding a 44% decline in the price of Bitcoin and a significant decrease in online search interest.

River's lower-bound estimate of $6.6 million for Lightning-routed transactions represents the minimum value that the firm is capable of assessing. Additionally, the organisation obtained the 503,000 figure for August 2021 from a study conducted in 2021 by K33, formerly Arcane Research. It further stated its inability to evaluate private Lightning transactions or those involving only two participants. Lightning processed a total of $78.2 million in transaction volume in August 2023, representing a 546 percent increase compared to the $12.1 million figure obtained from K33 for August 2021. Lightning is currently executing a minimum of 47% of Bitcoin's on-chain transactions, according to Wouters.

As of September 2023, River estimated that between 279,000 and 1.1 million Lightning users were active. The firm attributed 27% of transaction growth to the gaming, social media gifting, and streaming sectors. River disclosed that the Lightning payments success rate on its platform for 308,000 transactions in August 2023 was 99.7%. The primary cause of failure is the inability to identify a payment route with sufficient liquidity to effectuate the transfer. The dataset possessed by River comprised 2.5 million transactions. Among the nodes comprising this dataset, 10% were payment channels and 29% were network capacity.

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