Nostr Web Client

someone explain to me how lightning works

I made this gif a while back. But it’s a good basic analogy. You load bitcoin into your node wallet and then open channels with one or more channel partners. A channel is a 2 of 2 multisig bitcoin address between you and your channel partner. As you send and receive payments the relative balance in those channels shift in and out. “The lightning network” is just a bunch of those nodes interconnected. The protocol routes payments by finding a pathway through interconnected nodes with a sufficient amount of liquidity to carry the payment through. If your node routes a payment then you pick up fees according to your channel fee policies.

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Discussion

₿itcoin ₿ender 2y ago

great explanation.

Definitely need to deep dive this topic. Seems almost as important as understanding bitcoin itself

corndalorian 2y ago

Absolutely 🔥 You’ll learn a lot about bitcoin by learning about lightning

₿itcoin ₿ender 2y ago

bitcoin becomes the substrate for millions of other applications

Like it or not, it’s kind of what’s happening with ordinals

corndalorian 2y ago

It’s the ultimate base layer for value transfer and settlement. People are going to try and build all sorts of things on it. We won’t all like all of them, and not everything will be friendly fire. It’s a good argument for ensuring its uncensorable quality doesn’t change.