South America only has 0.8% of Lightning Network nodes. There is a pattern that interconnects nodes between countries with a similar culture.
Researchers from Austrian and Swiss universities conducted a study that indicates the location of most nodes of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) micropayment network. They say that they are in seven countries: the United States, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland.
The results of the study entitled Node classification and geographic analysis of the Lightning cryptocurrency network reveal that 44.8% of Lightning Network nodes are in North America, while 43.1% are in Europe. The other nodes are in Asia (6.2%) and Oceania (2.2%). South America and Africa have lower participation, with 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively.
The researchers monitored the network’s data in 81 countries, clarifying that they could not determine the location of 2.3% of the remaining nodes due to a lack of IP addresses. In almost all cases, they found that the United States precedes Germany as the leading country to which most nodes connect.
Professors Philipp Zabka, Klaus-T. Foerster, Stefan Schmid, and Christian Decker conducted the research. They gathered data from the network between March 2018 and January 2020. They say that they recorded more than 7.8 million messages from the websites showing the states of the public nodes.
The study aimed to obtain data on the geographical distribution of Lightning Network nodes. The authors established that the network has a prominent presence in metropolitan areas, while payment channels show a moderate geographical bias.
Cultural Patterns between Lightning Network Nodes
Concerning connection preferences, most Lightning Network nodes tend to create channels with the largest hubs. This occurs, even if there is a great geographical distance between them. However, the researchers identified some patterns related to cultural identity.
They observed a tendency to share nodes and establish channels with countries that share the same language or a similar ethnic group. However, the authors stress the need for further analysis to assess this behavior.
This distribution relates to the results of another recent study. The authors found high levels of concentration among Lightning Network nodes due to the constant creation of multiple centers (with many hubs).
The Most Widely Used Lightning Implementation
The academics recall in their report that the Lightning Network currently uses three implementations: LND, C-Lightning, and Eclair. They explain that “each written in a programming language, with slightly different values in its parameters.”
To know which of these implementations is the most used in most countries, the researchers classified and sorted 99.9% of the nodes.
They started to analyze the beginning of the growth of the Lightning Network in 2018. At that time, the LND and C-Lightning clients released their first major update, the professors recall.
They determined that about 87% of the nodes on the Lightning Network are LND. Meanwhile, 11% of the nodes are deployed with C-Lightning, and about 2% use Eclair.
The results of the study also show that deployments within a country have a similar distribution. There is a predominance of the LND client in 78 of the 81 countries.
The academics focused on the countries of North America, Europe, and Asia, where 94% of the total population of LN nodes are. They did this to determine if the geographical distribution of the three implementations was similar in all countries.
By Willmen Blanco
