Technology

Lightning

Lightning is Bitcoin's Layer 2 protocol: it delivers instant, high-volume, low-cost transactions, bypassing blockchain confirmation times.

The Lightning Network (LN) is a decentralized Layer 2 payment protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain, engineered to solve the core scalability problem. It utilizes bidirectional payment channels and smart contracts to facilitate off-chain transactions, achieving speeds measured in milliseconds to seconds. This capability allows the network to handle millions to billions of transactions per second, dramatically exceeding legacy payment systems. By settling payments off-chain, the LN drastically reduces transaction fees, making instant micropayments and cross-chain atomic swaps (with compatible chains) economically viable, thereby restoring Bitcoin's utility as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.