The
Lightning Network was first introduced by
Thaddeus Dryja and
Joseph Poon in their 2015 whitepaper—a current version can be found here. By developing an off-chain solution, the Lightning Network addresses the issues of low transaction rates as well as growing fees, and is best understood through an analogy.
One of the limitation of lightning network is its channels are capped. It only means that transactions are not able to exceed the total BTC deposited in the wallet when the payment channel was initially opened. This may lead to users having to choose between having liquidity in the Lightning Network or in private wallets on the main blockchain. This brings inconvenience for users without enough amounts of Bitcoin.
However, the Lightning Network could be the solution to cryptocurrencies’ scaling issue. You know why? Because this kind of technology was originally made for Bitcoin, but the time has change and it innovated and now it is also using for other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Ether and Ripple.
Source:
https://blog.kucoin.com/lightning-network-off-chain-solution-to-bitcoin-scalability-sk-bt
