Topic: Lightning Network and its great importance to Bitcoin network - page 2. (Read 390 times)

You can be charged by route nodes that connects channels. I say can cause for some it's free while for others you pay a fee.

There are limits to how much you can send based on how much you funded the channel with and how much you've spent from it.

Also what you described is an uncooperative close. Usually if both parties are online, both can sign for the channel to be closed and the funds will be transferred onchain.

Yes but this is not totally true, this is only true if you are sending to the person that you open a channel with directly. If you are sending to other people that does not open channel with you, you will pay small fee. The more of other people channels that you use for the payment, the more the fee. Because of the limited in the maximum amount that you can send in using each channel, that is why lightning is not to good for huge payments. Just good to use it for small payments.

If you want to use lightning wallet, there are many lightning wallets. You can go through this thread to see some of the good lighting wallets

Lists of open-source bitcoin lightning wallets

Recently, after reading and learning about certain technical terms that fall under Bitcoin, I never had a reason to regret choosing this path. Reading about Bitcoin for the past month has literally been one of the best things that has happened to me.

Lightning Network (LN) has been a very popular term I always come across in people's posts and replies on BTT, but I didn't pay much attention to it as I thought it would be somewhat complex to learn. To my greatest surprise, LN happens to be one of the most interesting parts of Bitcoin I have read about, as I now understand why Bitcoin enthusiasts talk so much about it. I literally found myself laughing after I found out why Bitcoin enthusiasts use it, but also found it difficult to believe at first.

Lightning Network
The Lightning Network (LN) allows users of a digital wallet to transfer BTC to another without any fees. This is achieved by adding a second layer to the Bitcoin network to enable transactions between parties off the blockchain(off-chain transactions). Two parties that want to use the LN simply create a payment channel that enables them to deposit a certain amount of BTC into a multi-signature address. Opening a payment channel happens on the blockchain for complete transparency, thereby allowing both parties to see that a certain amount of BTC has been deposited.

A balance sheet simply holds the records of both parties' deposited amounts, so when any individual chooses to send a certain amount, values are deducted from one and added to the other. This transaction can continue as there is no limit because it happens off the chain. The payment channel can be closed by any of the parties just by broadcasting the signed balance sheet to the Bitcoin network for validation. If miners are able to validate the transaction, the deposited BTC would be shared according to how it was recorded on the balance sheet, thereby forming a single transaction on the blockchain.

LN was meant to address Bitcoin scalability, thereby processing faster and lower cost transactions on the Bitcoin network. There have been speculations that the LN method isn't secure, as it exposes people's BTC to theft, but I hope to use it someday since I haven't come across any articles of stolen BTC due to LN. Please pardon my excitement, but I think LN is really cool.