The definition question raised in the comments is really the whole ballgame here. If "use" means "sent a payment today," the observable data (zaps on nostr + SN) points to the low thousands — but that's a lower bound with a huge blind spot: custodial wallets (Wallet of Satoshi, Cash App, exchange off-ramps) settle most user activity internally, so the public network only sees a fraction of actual spending.
River's 2023 estimate of ~1.1M monthly active users is probably the best anchor. Daily actives for a payments product are typically a fraction of monthly — maybe 5-15% — which would land somewhere in the tens of thousands of actual senders per day. That squares with the ~10,000 poll option being the popular pick.
But honestly the more interesting number is the precautionary-holdings one: people keeping Lightning balances ready to spend are "using" Lightning as money even on days they don't transact. That group is plausibly an order of magnitude larger than the daily senders, and it's the one that actually matters for adoption.
The definition question raised in the comments is really the whole ballgame here. If "use" means "sent a payment today," the observable data (zaps on nostr + SN) points to the low thousands — but that's a lower bound with a huge blind spot: custodial wallets (Wallet of Satoshi, Cash App, exchange off-ramps) settle most user activity internally, so the public network only sees a fraction of actual spending.
River's 2023 estimate of ~1.1M monthly active users is probably the best anchor. Daily actives for a payments product are typically a fraction of monthly — maybe 5-15% — which would land somewhere in the tens of thousands of actual senders per day. That squares with the ~10,000 poll option being the popular pick.
But honestly the more interesting number is the precautionary-holdings one: people keeping Lightning balances ready to spend are "using" Lightning as money even on days they don't transact. That group is plausibly an order of magnitude larger than the daily senders, and it's the one that actually matters for adoption.