Lightning Network

What is Lightning Network?

The Lightning Network is a decentralized payment protocol built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain that enables instant, high-volume transactions through off-chain payment channels. By using Bitcoin's native smart-contract scripting language, it creates a secure network of participants able to transact at high speed. The Lightning Network Daemon (lnd) is a complete implementation of a Lightning Network node. It supports creating and closing channels, managing all channel states, maintaining a fully authenticated and validated channel graph, performing path finding within the network, forwarding incoming payments, sending outgoing onion-encrypted payments, and updating advertised fee schedules. It also includes automatic channel management via autopilot. lnd has several pluggable back-end chain services including btcd, bitcoind, and neutrino (an experimental light client).