On lightning does all participants need to have a channel open?
Or does simply having a lightning address enough to be able to at least receive?
Discussion
All lightning nodes need channels to be able to send and receive sats across the network.
Participants is a hard term to use here, you might be the node operator and be responsible for opening channels.
Or you might want to run a node, but give delicate the responsibility to someone else like in the case of Zeus and Phoenix wallets.
Or you might decide you don’t want to deal with any of this, and ask a node operator to give you a sub account and they will handle all the rest, like in the case of custodial wallets.
Each of these come with different levels and types of risks.
Finally addresses are an added convenience that sit on top of all that and needs it to function. But you can still receive sats with an address by creating invoices.
Hope this helps.
It does, thank you. I am trying to figure out enabling zaps for myself. But I am trying to do it myself if I can. However I do not have any channels. I am still very unlearned about lightning beyond a general idea of how it works.
Apologies, one more question to clarify invoices.
In the case of an invoice, with that would I not need a channel?
Or must some channel always exist in order for funds to be able to reach me.
Channels are what make the Lightning network. So yes. Always needed.