Hash Time-Locked Contract Issues The Lightning Network as it is today enables payment routing by using the Hash Time-Locked contract, the HTLC. In simple terms, this contract enables...

As Bitcoin adoption increases, demand for block space will also rise, which inevitably results in higher on-chain fees. In this scenario, users will lean more on Lightning for...

Routing The lightning network achieves high-frequency payments by taking payments off-chain. This means that information about a transaction is not broadcasted to the whole network as with Bitcoin...

Interaction Between Protocols Imagine a scenario where Alice wants to buy a book from Bob’s e-commerce, but Alice only has on-chain funds and Bob only accepts payments through...

Lightning Network payment channels work by enforcing a “fairness protocol” – a set of rules that incentivize honest collaboration between channel partners. After funding a channel, payments flow...

The Lightning Network uses payment pre-images and payment hashes as essential components of its Hash-Time-Locked Contract (HTLC). The HTLC is a smart contract that enforces a fairness protocol...

A payment channel is a mechanism that enables the establishment of a financial relationship between two nodes on the Lightning Network. These nodes are referred to as channel...

Onion routing is a technology that precedes the invention of the Lightning Network by 25 years. It’s also used in Tor, hence its name: “The Onion Router”....

In this piece, we’ll go through how private the lighting network is and what kind of heuristics or attacks can be put to use to de-anonymize users....

Learn how blinded paths operate within the context of the lightning network. This breakdown makes it simple to understand how privacy on Lightning is advancing....

A lightning channel funding transaction, commonly called an “open-channel transaction”, is a transaction that is used to open a payment channel on the lightning network. It anchors the...

Learn about negative fees and how they impact the lightning network. Negative fees allow a node to pay to forward a payment instead of charging to forward a...