According to recent market research by Kaminari, the use of Bitcoin as a transactional tool has steadily increased over the past few years. As evidence of this trend, researchers point to 40 million transactions conducted in the third quarter of 2023.

According to the research, the growing popularity of Lightning Network (LN) among cryptocurrency exchanges and other platforms is one of the key reasons for the record increase in quarterly cryptocurrency transactions. The study also demonstrates that the number of companies operating within the LN ecosystem has grown from 94 in October 2021 to 179 companies represented in 28 different categories.

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have become the primary driving force in expanding the use of the Lightning Network second-layer protocol, which is based on the Bitcoin blockchain. Leading trading platforms such as Binance, OKEx, and Bitstamp have become some of the most prominent organizations that have recently joined the Lightning Network ecosystem.

However, this process is evolving slowly, as only slightly more than 6% of centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have integrated the second-layer protocol.

Market research also demonstrates that cryptocurrency wallets, including custodial and non-custodial wallets, play a significant role in driving the growth of the Lightning Network. However, similar to the situation with centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, currently, only two out of the top ten most popular wallets by user count, namely Exodus and Bitpay, support the Lightning Network Layer 2 protocol.