Bitcoin’s Lightning Hits $1.17B Monthly Volume Milestone

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network has reached a significant milestone, achieving an estimated $1.17 billion in monthly transaction volume for the first time. According to a recent analysis by River Financial, the network processed approximately 5.22 million transactions in November 2025. 

This achievement highlights the steady growth in real-world usage of the Bitcoin layer-2 scaling solution. Notably, this milestone was reached during a period of relatively stable Bitcoin prices throughout 2025, indicating that utility, rather than speculation, is the main driver of this growth. 

Growth in Volume and Capacity

River Financial gathered its estimates from anonymous data from major Lightning node operators, including ACINQ, Kraken, Breez, Lightspark, and LQWD. Together, these account for over half of the network’s public capacity. The report shows that transaction volume increased by about 400% in 2025.

Although the total number of transactions fell a bit from previous highs, mainly due to fewer small test payments, the average transaction value rose to around $223, almost double the earlier average of $118. By late 2025, public channel capacity reached a record high of over 5,600 BTC and stayed high into early 2026. 

This growth in infrastructure enabled larger, more stable transactions. A significant event occurred on January 28, 2026, when Secure Digital Markets made a $1 million payment to Kraken via Voltage’s managed system. The transaction completed in less than half a second at very low fees, making it the largest publicly reported single Lightning transaction to date.

Key Drivers Behind the Surge

The integration of exchanges played a crucial role in boosting the surge in transaction volume throughout 2025. Platforms added the Lightning Network to make withdrawals, deposits, and internal operations more efficient. In addition, institutional investors showed greater interest, seeking faster settlement times for trading and lending. 

Remittances and merchant payments also played a significant role, but small payments in areas like gaming and social tipping became less important as the focus shifted to larger transactions. River noted that this growth occurred regardless of Bitcoin’s price fluctuations, highlighting Lightning’s practical benefits. 

Looking ahead, new innovations, such as Lightning Labs’ open-source toolkit for AI agents, could enable automatic machine-to-machine payments and bring back small-value transactions. River plans to release a more detailed report on Bitcoin adoption soon, including more data on usage patterns and its integration into the ecosystem.

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