The emerging Lightning Network is likely to lower transaction fees significantly thanks to the high competition between nodes.

According to the Lightning Network developers Joseph Poon and Tadge Dryja, many bitcoin users consider it an opportunity to earn a return on conducting transactions. The more bitcoin users connect to the new network, the stronger the competition between them will be.

The network is expected to process millions or even billions of operations per second, marking a significant scaling of the cryptocurrency network. This may come true thanks to the network's ability to process instant micropayments without creating an on-blockchain transaction.

The first functional version of the Lightning Network is to be released in summer. Now the network is being tested at SegNet (a test network for a “soft fork” Segregated Witness).

Developers claim that joining the network will be extremely easy:

“It sort of feels like mining, but worse. There aren’t even capital costs to get the equipment. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection and bitcoin,” Dryja told Bitcoin Magazine, adding that even one satoshi will be considered a price too high to pay per transaction.

As of today, an average commission in the bitcoin network is around 40-50 satoshi per byte ($0.00021 at current exchange rates), with an average delay in payment transaction at about 5-15 minutes.

The concept of the Lightning Network belonged to Jameson Lopp, software engineer at BitGo, and was supported by Blockstream. This raised concerns among the members of bitcoin community, many of whom believe that, allegedly seeking to dominate bitcoin network, Blockstream deprives the technology of its major advantage, i.e. decentralization.

Same argument applies to the emerging Lightning Network, as, concentrating around a small number of nodes with the largest number of connections with other nodes, transactions might get partially centralized. Still, the developers reject any such suppositions.

Elena Platonova