What it means
How channels help
Channel participants maintain agreed states instead of recording each payment as a separate Bitcoin mainnet transaction. Payments can be routed through connected channels using protocol-defined conditional transfers.
Operational requirements
Payment success depends on usable routes, liquidity and the participants’ channel state. Invoices and payment identifiers belong to the Lightning workflow rather than the mainnet confirmation workflow. A service must also consider channel monitoring, closure procedures and whether a third party holds funds or operates nodes on its behalf.
Related concepts
In practice
A concrete example
A shop requests a Lightning invoice payment and checks that payment’s outcome; it does not wait for a new mainnet block for every channel payment.
Technical notes & boundaries
Lightning does not guarantee that every payment succeeds, has zero fees or can be routed for any amount. Channel operations can require on-chain transactions.
Go to the source.
Original references used for this definition. Product details and standards can change.