Lightning (which is shorthand for Hash Locked Bi-Directional Payment Channels) is a trust-less net settlement system built by leveraging the smart contracting capabilities of bitcoin.
Such a system enables transactions to occur between a limited set of participants without the requirement that the entire world know about them.
Avoiding telling the entire world reduces the cost of transaction processing by many orders of magnitude (something on the order of 1,000,000 times cheaper).
Such a system enables transactions to occur between a limited set of participants without the requirement that the entire world know about them.
Avoiding telling the entire world reduces the cost of transaction processing by many orders of magnitude (something on the order of 1,000,000 times cheaper).