Bitcoin Forum

As far as I understood, the lightning network is accessible only through intermediary wallets that have both the on-chain and lightning feature. In other words, it is not possible to send sats directly from a base layer wallet, such as Bitcoin Core, to a lightning-only wallet, like Alby.

Is it possible to implement a lightning network feature on Bitcoin Core?

Iirc there are a few lightning network clients that function on top of bitcoin core (I don't know if they share wallets or not but I'd assume they don't).

I think they're intended to be separate though as the lighting network doesn't seem widely used yet and a lot of bitcoin's additional protocols are provided separately. Bitcoin "core" might just be that, the core version of everything you need to do with bitcoin mainnet transactions.

They do not have to have both LN and layer 1 BTC. There are some wallets that are only LN. But the majority of LN wallets do support on chain too.




Possible? Yes with a complete re-write of it's functionality and a lot of bloat. So, no it's not going to happen. Not should it, there is a lot more to LN then just a wallet. You need to setup channels and some other things. Core is just for holding / moving BTC.

-Dave

Isn't it a confirmation that we need an intermediary wallet to use the lightning network? In other words, there's no direct access, but we must necessarily use a bridge whenever we want to switch from one to the other. So, there's waters between the layers. Is it correct?

The Lightning network is a project built on top of the Bitcoin network, and therefore on top of Bitcoin Core. Any developer who's working on Core and is interested in lightning can work on it, and in fact lots do. I think your question if the Bitcoin Core QT (wallet software) will ever support lightning payments. Isn't it?

I don't think it will, because lightning isn't the core of bitcoin.