The Bitcoin Lightning Network is growing, but with some scalability and security flaws

Bitcoin's Lightning Network is expanding at an exponential rate despite a number of scalability and security flaws in its protocol.

The Lightning Network is a second layer solution to Bitcoin's scalability problem.

BitMEX Research, a subsidiary of the crypto-derivatives trading platform BitMEX, published its sixth report on the Bitcoin's Lightning Network.

"The volume of transactions here is quite large and may indicate more experimentation with lightning than many expected. The data also indicates non-cooperative closures are more of a common closure type than people think."

According to BitMEX Research, a non-cooperative channel closure occurs when the output of a given transaction is redeemed during the sweeping of funds after the channel is closed.

To date, there have been nearly 60,000 channel closure transactions spending a total of 1,074 Bitcoin.

"The fact that non-cooperative closures are more common than many thought, means the privacy and scalability benefits of lightning are lower than many expected too."

Despite the scalability and security flaws on the LN, BitMEX Research affirmed that non-cooperative closure volumes dropped significantly since March 2019.

According to the researchers, as users become familiar with the proper use of the LN and lightning wallets, "The prevalence of non-cooperative closures could fall."

The Lightning Network is still an experimental project.