Lightning Network Capacity Falls as Security Concerns Mount

The Lightning Network has seen a decline in public node counts and capacity over the past year. In May 2026, Spark's research found that public capacity was roughly 4,898 BTC across 41,080 channels and 17,438 nodes.

A security write-up from Hoge.gg in late August 2026 flagged that LND's cooperative-close and reorg-protection fix only landed cleanly on the 0.21.x line, not 0.20.x as some changelogs implied.

The broader network context also matters for anyone deciding whether to route payments for other people or just spend from a personal channel. A late-August 2026 read of Japanese network trackers showed public node counts and capacity both falling by double digits in a single month.