News — lightning network bitcoin

September 29, 2008. It was a clear morning in New York City. However, the weather didn’t reflect the mood. By the end of the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 778 points, representing the largest point drop in history. It prompted one of the most profound global recessions in recent times. Is it a coincidence that only a few weeks later in October, Satoshi Nakamoto released the now famous whitepaper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. When we reflect on 2008 it seems likely that the crash, triggered by the housing bubble, was the impetus for creating a trust-less financial...

Lightning Network (LN) is a network of payment channels which exists outside the blockchain. Lightning Network relies on you opening a two-way trusted payment channel with another user which then turns into a network. The channel handles all the main transactions (opening and closing transactions) alongside all the secondary ones (all other transactions). All the main transactions are registered on the blockchain, but all the secondary ones exist only inside the Lightning Network payment channel that you have created. Let's imagine this in real life. Suppose you come to the pub for a few beers. You know that you'll be staying in that pub...