Lightning Network, explained
Lightning is a Bitcoin payment-channel network supporting payments without recording each transfer as a separate base-chain transaction.
- The field
- Payment
- Reading time
- 1 minute
- In this entry
- Meaning · relevance · limits
The meaning
Lightning is a Bitcoin payment-channel network supporting payments without recording each transfer as a separate base-chain transaction.
Why it matters
It uses its own invoices and routing. A merchant must explicitly integrate the method before a Lightning payment can settle an order.
The boundary
Ordinary Bitcoin on-chain support does not establish Lightning compatibility.
Payment channels have operational requirements
A merchant may explore Lightning for small invoices, then assess channel liquidity, node availability, backups and payment reconciliation. Those requirements belong to a separate deployment from an on-chain Bitcoin receiving address. OmbraHost offers on-chain BTC among its eight asset/network routes; Lightning is not offered.
- Separate an on-chain BTC invoice from a Lightning invoice and verify wallet compatibility.
- Node availability and routing liquidity can affect payment success.