Accepting Bitcoin without a confirmation

[BlackHatCoiner]

Unfortunately Lightning does not solve the problem because it adds a third party into the transaction and additionally requires capital to be tied up in the liquidity channel.

You have misunderstood. There's no transaction intermediary in the same sense as with the banking sector, unless you have specified otherwise (e.g., using a custodial wallet). When opening a lightning channel, the funds remain on your possession, and you can close the channel either cooperatively or non-cooperatively. There are "intermediaries" in the sense that the payment gets through various routes until it reaches the recipient.

For example, if Alice wants to pay Charlie and they don't share a channel, they have to go through Bob's node that shares a channel with both Alice and Charlie, like this:

Code:

Alice <---> Bob <---> Charlie

[we-btc]

You have misunderstood. There's no transaction intermediary in the same sense as with the banking sector, unless you have specified otherwise (e.g., using a custodial wallet). When opening a lightning channel, the funds remain on your possession, and you can close the channel either cooperatively or non-cooperatively. There are "intermediaries" in the sense that the payment gets through various routes until it reaches the recipient.

For example, if Alice wants to pay Charlie and they don't share a channel, they have to go through Bob's node that shares a channel with both Alice and Charlie, like this:

Code:

Alice <---> Bob <---> Charlie

Please correct me if I am wrong or there is another option.

For a business to accept payments on the Lightning network they have to open a channel with a third party.  The channel needs to be funded with inbound liquidity in the amount necessary to cover the transactions they are expecting.  There are two ways to do this.  The business can open a channel by sending the Bitcoin to a third party who makes it available as inbound liquidity on the newly opened channel or the business can pay a third party to provide the liquidity.  Either way there has to be a third party involved in the businesses transactions.

[BlackHatCoiner]

For a business to accept payments on the Lightning network they have to open a channel with a third party.

They have to open a channel with a peer I would rather call.

The channel needs to be funded with inbound liquidity in the amount necessary to cover the transactions they are expecting.

From the sender's perspective, it needs to have outbound liquidity (the liquidity which allows to spend on the network). Respectively, the recipient needs to have inbound liquidity (which allows to receive).

The business can open a channel by sending the Bitcoin to a third party who makes it available as inbound liquidity on the newly opened channel

If I'm understanding right, you're asking how the recipient can gain inbound liquidity. The answer is either someone opens a channel with them (which initially would grant them all the liquidity as inbound), or they open a channel with someone and convert their outbound liquidity to inbound (e.g., by selling LN-BTC for BTC).

What needs to be mentioned is that none of the peers forfeits their custody, at any point.

[vjudeu]

For a business to accept payments on the Lightning network they have to open a channel with a third party.

Why? The user could open the channel as well. And if you have a regular customer, that pays 0.001 BTC today, and 0.002 BTC tomorrow, then that customer could just allocate 0.01 BTC in the channel, and send to you some "channel closing transactions" with bigger, and bigger amounts on your side. And then, you can sweep that, when fees are low, or sweep coins less frequently, like every week, instead of every day, and pay smaller fees, because of that.

Either way there has to be a third party involved in the businesses transactions.

There is no need to do so. You can create a channel, or your customer could do so. And if you are worried about "closing channels with old state", then you can use timelocks, and you can use two unidirectional channels, instead of one bidirectional channel. And also, it is technically possible to outsource "being a watchtower" into the community, and then, it can be called "decentralized sidechain, based on LN". But it is optional, and if you don't want to watch your channels 24/7, then just use timelocks properly, so that if you put a timestamp in your transaction, it won't be broadcasted before that date (and then, you will have the time to connect to the network, and make sure, that nobody is trying to do a double-spending attempt at 3am).