Monthly transaction activity on the Bitcoin Lightning Network — a layer-2 solution designed to facilitate faster and cheaper BTC payments — exceeded $1 billion in November 2025, according to a report by Bitcoin financial services firm River.

Lightning transaction volume reached an estimated $1.1 billion during the month, spanning approximately 5.2 million transactions, based on data shared by Sam Wouters, River’s director of marketing. The report stated:

“Lightning adoption happened despite the price declining all of November and generally not doing much in 2025. The adoption was largely driven by exchanges, as well as a growing number of businesses accepting bitcoin payments.”

Although usage expanded, overall transaction counts in 2025 remained below 2023 levels, when monthly activity peaked at 6.6 million transactions in August of that year. River attributed the earlier spike to experimentation with micropayments in gaming platforms and messaging applications. The report also projected a renewed rise in Lightning transactions as individuals and companies begin testing AI-related payment use cases.

The Lightning Network is designed to improve Bitcoin’s scalability by enabling near-instant settlement between participants, shifting many transactions offchain and allowing final balances to be recorded on the main Bitcoin blockchain only when payment channels close. This structure supports Bitcoin’s potential use as a payment method, rather than solely as a speculative asset or store of value.

Institutional and exchange adoption grows

By creating payment channels between parties, the Lightning Network reduces both fees and confirmation times. Instead of recording every transaction on the base layer, only the net result of offchain activity is posted to the blockchain. Given that Bitcoin blocks are added roughly every 10 minutes, base-layer payments can be impractical for smaller retail transactions, particularly in physical commerce settings.

In December 2025, Lightning Network capacity — the total amount of BTC locked into the network to facilitate liquidity — climbed to 5,606 BTC as adoption by businesses and institutions increased.

Institutional use cases have also begun to emerge. In February, trading and lending firm Secure Digital Markets transferred $1 million to cryptocurrency exchange Kraken using the Lightning Network. The transaction demonstrated that large, seven-figure sums can be settled between institutional counterparties through Bitcoin’s layer-2 infrastructure.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-1b-monthly-volume

https://x.com/SDWouters/status/2024507942708351443

https://x.com/River/status/2024532716859883971