Comparing Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin's Lightning Network

Bitcoin Cash ($BCH) and the Lightning Network are, at a high level, both unique solutions to scaling Bitcoin ($BTC), which is more or less designed to offer slow and limited scaling at its base layer. Created in 2017, Bitcoin Cash forked the Bitcoin ledger to create a protocol focused on faster transaction throughput and low transaction fees. First proposed in 2016, Lightning Network is a blockchain agnostic layer-two protocol to help scale blockchains like Bitcoin via off-chain payment channels.

Perfectly comparing Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin's Lightning Network is impossible. But general comparisons can be made by examining loosely analogous metrics measuring the activity of each protocol. Messari looked at 4 metrics for each protocol, which offer a better glimpse of the comparative growth and use of both Bitcoin scaling solutions. For Bitcoin Cash, transaction count, traded volume, returns (denominated in Bitcoin), and active addresses all fell by double-digit percentages since September 2018. Lightning Network's channels per node, total node count, unique channels, and network capacity (denominated in Bitcoin) all grew by double- and triple-digit percentages over the same period.

Learn more about Bitcoin Cash here.

Learn more about Lightning Network here.

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