Lightning Nodes
Public Lightning Network nodes observed by mempool.emzy.de
Saved observation
13,948 public nodes
- Measured at
- Retrieved at
- Source
- mempool.emzy.de · Dataset used
Recent observation. The measurement is less than 72 hours old when this page was generated on .
This observation and the chart use the same history from mempool.emzy.de, an independent instance of the mempool software. They cover the public graph observed by Emzy, not all channels, users or payment volume.
History available from .
The history is replaced in full when the site updates, without adding points from a different observer. Each point’s date is shown in its tooltip. The saved observation remains readable if the chart does not load.
- Source
- mempool.emzy.de
What this measures
This chart counts the public nodes of the Lightning Network, the payment layer built on top of Bitcoin. A node is a piece of software, such as LND, Core Lightning or Eclair, that opens payment channels, relays other people’s payments and settles on Bitcoin when it has to. The data comes from mempool.emzy.de, which rebuilds the map of the network from the announcements nodes broadcast to each other, known as “gossip.” The unit is simple: one node, one public identity.
A public node is not a user
A node only shows up here if it has at least one public channel, announced to the rest of the network. Everything else falls outside the count: nodes that only open unannounced channels, many non-custodial mobile wallets, which connect to their provider’s node through private channels, and customers of custodial services, who have no node at all. Behind the node of a large custodial wallet or an exchange there can be thousands of users. This chart counts infrastructure, not people.
Conversely, a single operator can run several nodes, and a node that has gone offline can stay visible for a while before it is dropped from the graph. Short-term moves are often just that kind of noise. The trend over several months is what counts, read alongside the number of channels.
More nodes does not mean more decentralization
Since Lightning’s first steps on mainnet in 2018, many public nodes have been run by individuals at home, often on small dedicated computers. But managing channels, liquidity and constant uptime takes time and locks up bitcoin. Part of the activity therefore seems to have concentrated around large routing nodes, liquidity service providers (LSPs) and exchanges.
A flat or falling node count does not mean Lightning is in retreat, though. It can reflect small nodes shutting down while usage shifts to wallets backed by a few large operators. That is not necessarily good news: the more payments flow through a handful of nodes, the more metadata those nodes see, and the more they start to look like control points.
🪙 What Is the Lightning Network? Bitcoin's Payment Layer Explained
Nodes by country and nodes by internet provider show where these nodes actually run, and how many depend on a few cloud hosts. Nodes reachable only over Tor do not reveal their location there, which is exactly the point.
What this chart cannot tell you is how many of these nodes are truly independent. Yet that is where Lightning’s censorship resistance is decided: a network of thousands of nodes stays fragile if most payments go through a few of them.