On July 24, the Lightning Network announced in a company blog post that they had released the alpha version of a new network monitoring tool. It monitors nodes running lnd, which is a protocol that the company developed that sits on top of Bitcoin's blockchain as well as on other blockchains and allows for high-speed processing of digital currency transactions.

Valentine Wallace, who works as software developer for the Lightning Network, wrote the blog post, in which he stated that the new tool would be called lndmon. He also stated that the tool had been released as open source and that it was a "drop-in, dockerized monitoring solution."

According to Wallace's blog post, the main purpose of the monitoring tool is to stop certain network problems associated with lnd from occurring. He mentioned that during the past year that there were a number of issues relating to lnd that could have prevented if a monitoring tool had been available.

Wallace listed a number of examples of how the new monitoring tool can be helpful. He said that if multiple channels close in quick succession, node operators could use the tool to receive of notifications of this. He further said that the tool would notify node operators if any of their peer connections are displaying any signs of instability.

The company believes that the tool and its ability to monitor events in real-time will go a long way toward making lnd more stable. They also believe that there are number of use cases for the tool that go beyond simply monitoring the network for possible problems. An example of this is monitoring lnd nodes for financial purposes, as the tool can monitor events such as the number of channels available. It can also monitor which locations provide for the cheapest routing fees.

In a related story, the Raspberry Pi Foundation recently released a new $35 computer that was specifically designed to run Bitcoin nodes. The computer reportedly can increase the efficiency of various node operations, which makes it useful for cryptocurrency miners as well as for both individuals and organizations running Bitcoin nodes.