I'm in a similar, semi educated situation as you are. But my interpretation of what I have read so far is different: As far as I understand it: When a channel

I'm in a similar, semi educated situation as you are. But my interpretation of what I have read so far is different: As far as I understand it: When a channel you have open is closed by the other side of the channel your wallet needs to know this within a certain time (24 hours? Can't remember). So to avoid having to read the blockchain updates once a day, you would subscribe to some service that tells you when one of your channels is closed. I also think you only have to do that if you distrust the other side of the channel. If you select a channel partner (a friend, a well known institution, a bank?) and only keep a small amount in that channel, I think you can just trust them and not sign up for any "watchtower" to watch if they try to cheat on you. PS: Looking up the growth of the Bitcoin blockhain it seems that even if you do the watching yourself, that would only mean to read less than 1MB per day? Here is the data: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/blocks-size https://www.blockchain.com/charts/blocks-size