What is the Lightning Network? It is generally spoken about in analogies, metaphors or direct explanations of purpose. 

“It’s the checking account, versus on-chain as the savings account.”

“It’s a series of tubes like the internet, with bitcoin flowing through them.”

“It’s a quick, instant-settlement layer of bitcoin.”

What it really is is a network of payment channels, where people lock bitcoin into a multisignature address, and update the state of balance distributions off-chain. It’s how we are going to scale Bitcoin — or at least part of how we are going to scale Bitcoin. 

In the short “Explainer” series in this magazine, I explain…

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