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You can route through your pair. Say A has a channel with B, B has a channel with C and C has a channel with D, you can make payment between A and D provided th
by varajelle 5y ago
You can route through your pair. Say A has a channel with B, B has a channel with C and C has a channel with D, you can make payment between A and D provided that B and C are online. In a way that nobody can steal money from one another, and neither B not D know who is paying who.
In practice, B and C would probably be like banks or exchanges, with many channels, while normal users only need one channel open.
- thehappypm 5y agoSo you need something centralized for it to actually work.
- varajelle 5y agoNo, why? It's all P2P.
- rocqua 5y agoTrue, and in fact lightning payments tend to take many hops if routed publically. But every citizen would still need atleast one lightning channel. And opening those is expensive.
- narrator 5y agoThe lightning channel would go through a custodial wallet. Yes, people could self host their own wallets, but fees would be higher because they'd have to open a lightning channel.