
Bitcoin's Lightning Network Alpha Release - aakilfernandes
http://lightning.community/release/software/lnd/lightning/2017/01/10/lightning-network-daemon-alpha-release/
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aakilfernandes
ELI5:

Lightning is a protocol built on top of bitcoin that allows the trustless
transfer of Bitcoin without settling to the chain. These transfers don't need
to be individually mined and don't take up capacity on the main chain.

The main drawback is that it requires locking up collateral in a "payment
channel" between two peers.

IMHO lightning could be the backbone of some interesting
micropayments/exchange architecture in the future.

