What is The Lightning Network ?

[raphma]

My prediction is that we'll probably end up with a somewhat centralised approach and I do agree that getting the balance right is going to be important.

Exactly what i was thinking! nothing obligatory but needed to achiev a better performance.

[zimmah]

Well, I don't think that the definition of LN (e.g. LN is X) has been used widely and even if you try searching for it you might fail to find one. The Lightning Network is supposed to represent complex, bi-directional payment channels. The idea behind it is that e.g. Alice and Bob open up a payment channel between them and lock X amount of funds (this process currently takes ~30 minutes, i.e. 3 confirmations) in it. What makes Lightning so 'special' here (in the terms of scalability) is that it enables a theoretically infinite amount of transactions between Alice and Bob without bloating the blockchain (imagine 1 million transactions between two partners, and only a single TX to settle on the main chain). Transacting within the LN is both instant and trust.less. It might even improve privacy at some point as there are potential unknown use cases.

If it's the case then when we are supposed to see it ?

IIRC someone said that a working implementation should be available soon (I assume beta).

How would this be used, who are alice and bob in this case?

Is it used between two large companies? can you use it for your groceries?

The lightning network will allow the network to scale by allowing the vast majority of transactions to happen off the blockchain
it's a secure micropayment channel

Lightning network might help scale Bitcoin, but not by much in my opinion. The problem is it scales based on the two factors

1) how long your willing to lock your Bitcoins (the longer the better potential scaling, but the concept of depositing equivalent of several thousand $ to be able to spend anytime at let say starbuck for the next half year is so out of normal people behaviour who dont have big wealth reserves and just living from day to day with their expences)

2) the number of people willing to use such pre deposit and lock Bitcoins for longer period method

in this case it would be more like a store specific gift card than actual money.

[albert11]

Will the different LN be interoperable? I hope so otherwise its going to get really confusing with all the different lightening projects.

[Lauda]

How would this be used, who are alice and bob in this case?
Is it used between two large companies? can you use it for your groceries?

Okay so the idea behind wallet-to-wallet routing can be explained by an example that includes a grocery shop:
Alice and Bob are normal people; could be anyone. Alice has an open channel with a Coffee shop. Bob has a channel to the Coffee shop and to a grocery store. The idea here is that Alice is able to use these connections (Alice -> Coffee Shop -> Bob -> Grocery shop) to buy from the grocery store even though she does not have a direct connection to it.

Will the different LN be interoperable?

There should be only 1 LN.

[Jasad]

Transactions for the Future

Instant Payments. Lightning-fast blockchain payments without worrying about block confirmation times. Security is enforced by blockchain smart-contracts without creating a on-blockchain transaction for individual payments. Payment speed measured in milliseconds to seconds.

Scalability. Capable of millions to billions of transactions per second across the network. Capacity blows away legacy payment rails by many orders of magnitude. Attaching payment per action/click is now possible without custodians.

Low Cost. By transacting and settling off-blockchain, the Lightning Network allows for exceptionally low fees, which allows for emerging use cases such as instant micropayments.

Cross Blockchains. Cross-chain atomic swaps can occur off-chain instantly with heterogeneous blockchain consensus rules. So long as the chains can support the same cryptographic hash function, it is possible to make transactions across blockchains without trust in 3rd party custodians.

this is should be a great future of transaction,i wish this transaction more faster and really low cost,i really apreciated for the creator or founder of this network,is the founder Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja?

[albert11]

Will the different LN be interoperable?

There should be only 1 LN.

Poon's lightening network will be ready this summer, then you have blockstream dev rusty rusell who is also working on a different lightening network. There are also a few other project working on their own lightening network so what makes you think that there will only be 1 LN? which would it be and why ?