Yup. From what I understand, Lightning channels are something like a wallet on the blockchain controlled by two Lightning nodes. There’s a total amount in the channel, and there’s also information about how much each party is entitled to. The fast payment aspect comes from the fact that the distribution of the funds in the channel can be changed by mutual agreement without needing to store this as a separate transaction.
Now, let’s say that you have a channel open with me, and I have a channel open with the person you want to send sats to. You give me sats from our channel, and in turn I give sats in my channel with your payee to your payee. I may also collect some small fee.
But to open a channel in the first place, you have to have some initial deposit, partly to pay for mining fees.
This is all just AFAICT, though.
MarsIronPI
npub1n0…ywjaz
2024-04-11 22:05:28
in reply to nevent1q…t76g
Author Public Key
npub1n0ukwj7v3k05eealze24fnszek4m5nprfxzp0kr8239t9sy43ujqnywjazPublished at
2024-04-11 22:05:28Event JSON
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"pubkey": "9bf9674bcc8d9f4ce7bf165554ce02cdabba4c23498417d867544ab2c0958f24",
"created_at": 1712873128,
"kind": 1,
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"content": "Yup. From what I understand, Lightning channels are something like a wallet on the blockchain controlled by two Lightning nodes. There’s a total amount in the channel, and there’s also information about how much each party is entitled to. The fast payment aspect comes from the fact that the distribution of the funds in the channel can be changed by mutual agreement without needing to store this as a separate transaction.\n\nNow, let’s say that you have a channel open with me, and I have a channel open with the person you want to send sats to. You give me sats from our channel, and in turn I give sats in my channel with your payee to your payee. I may also collect some small fee.\n\nBut to open a channel in the first place, you have to have some initial deposit, partly to pay for mining fees.\n\nThis is all just AFAICT, though.",
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}