Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Surpasses $1 Billion in Monthly Volume As Adoption Grows

Bitcoin's Lightning Network, the layer-two protocol for faster, cheaper transactions, surpassed $1 billion in monthly transaction volume in November 2025, processing an estimated $1.17 billion across 5.22 million transactions, according to data aggregated by River.

While the transaction count slightly decreased from 2023 due to the fading of temporary micropayment experiments in gaming, the average transaction size significantly increased to $223 from $118 the previous year, indicating that the dominant use case is currently moving larger sums between exchanges rather than everyday small purchases.

River suggests that future adoption spikes may come from AI-powered agentic payments, especially following the release of tools by Lightning Labs enabling AI agents to run nodes and make autonomous payments, signaling progress toward using BTC for settlement.

(Source：Bitcoin Magazine)