Lightning Labs Announces New Upgrade To Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

The Lightning Network, a layer added on top of the Bitcoin blockchain that increases scalability and adds other benefits, is getting even more of an upgrade.

Build The Future of Bitcoin’s Blockchain

Lightning Labs, the team behind the Lightning Network project, released something called “Lndmon” that helps users analyze any activities a little easier, reports CoinDesk.

Anyone interested in the tool can then use it to view information related to their node and every other node on the Bitcoin network. The data is portrayed via color graphs, and details network fees, lightning payment channels, and much more.

Ideally, users running lightning nodes will benefit most from the Lndmon upgrade. Those with such nodes will be using the network more securely than others, and it is recommended that anyone who can set one up, does so.

Essentially, anyone with a lightning node and using this upgrade will easily be able to see any node activity, if their node is a routing node or not, and just to educate themselves more about the network as whole.

The entire Lndmon changelog is available here via a blog post. There, Valentine Wallace, an engineer over at Lightning Labs, describes the offering a little more:

“Today we’re excited to announce the first alpha release of lndmon: a drop-in, dockerized monitoring solution for lnd. As the network has grown over the past year, we’ve noticed gaps in its observability and the need for an easy-to-use tool for routing node operators to manage their nodes.”

Wallace continues, stating, “this year, lack of such a suitable tool caused certain problems in the peer-to-peer network to remain undiscovered until they became harmful.” The upgrade, along with the aforementioned solutions, “helps prevent problems by enabling users to monitor trends and take preventative action.”

The post then details an example:

“For example, a routing node operator may want to be notified if multiple channels are closed in rapid succession or if their peer connections show signs of instability.”

Overall, it seems that this upgrade will help users day trading on the Lightning Network, and hopefully, more will come out of the project soon.