Lightning Network map

What the map shows

Each circle is a public Lightning node whose IP address could be geolocated. Its size follows the node’s capacity, the bitcoin locked in its public channels. Lines are the 7,892 largest payment channels between 2 located nodes, except those whose 2 ends sit in the same data center.

Leading country by number of nodes: China, 46.4% of the map, for 0.02% of their capacity. Leading country by capacity: United States, 48.4%.

As of 27 October 2026, Amazon.com alone hosted 42.2% of Lightning capacity, and the 3 largest providers 70.9%. A large part of the network runs in the same few data centers.

On the same date, 4,565 nodes were reachable only through Tor, 32.7% of the 13,970 public nodes counted by our node. They have no location and do not appear on the map.

The Graph tab sets geography aside. These large channels link 1,113 nodes, pulled together by their connections: the nodes at the center are those that hold the most large channels.

What the sources say

No explorer sees “the” Lightning Network: each one sees it from its own nodes and filters it its own way. The gaps mostly come from what each source counts, every announced node or only those it considers active. Our own Lightning node is listed on the same footing as the others: one more observer, not a reference.

Method and limits

• The location is that of the server running the node, found from its IP address: a data center, not its owner. A company can run its node in another country.
• When only the country of an IP address is known, the node sits on a default point for that country. In the United States, that point lies in Kansas, which explains the cluster of large nodes in the middle of the plains.
• Nodes reachable only through Tor and private (unannounced) channels are invisible here. Channels are drawn only when both ends are located.
• Capacity shares add up the capacity of every node: a channel counts at both of its ends.
• The graph only shows the 10,000 largest open channels whose 2 ends are located. Smaller channels and Tor nodes are not in it.
• Positions, channels and hosting providers: only 2 of our sources publish node locations, mempool.space and our own Lightning node (LND, read by the same open-source software, mempool). Every night, the map takes the more recent of the two readings, and the more complete one when they are from the same day. As of 27 October 2026, that is our node.
• Key figures and rankings: every night, they are cross-checked across Amboss, 1ML, LightningNetwork+, mempool.space, and our node, with no source given priority. A value is confirmed when at least 2 up-to-date sources agree within 5%; a source whose data is more than 7 days old no longer votes.

Positions and channels: our own LND node, read by the open-source mempool software, which geolocates IP addresses with MaxMind. Basemap: OpenFreeMap, © OpenStreetMap. Map data (JSON)