A funding transaction creates a shared output. Each new commitment transaction supersedes the previous balance state, while timelocks and revocation secrets make broadcasting an obsolete state punishable or recoverable. Cooperative close is cheap and final; unilateral close uses the pre-signed enforcement path and must respect the protocol’s delay and monitoring assumptions.
A two-party contract whose latest signed state reallocates locked bitcoin without publishing every update on-chain.
A funding transaction creates a shared output. Each new commitment transaction supersedes the previous balance state, while timelocks and revocation secrets make broadcasting an obsolete state punishable or recoverable. Cooperative close is cheap and final; unilateral close uses the pre-signed enforcement path and must respect the protocol’s delay and monitoring assumptions.
A validating node can check the relevant transaction, block and policy data directly; a wallet, explorer, miner or routing service is useful infrastructure, not the final source of protocol truth.
Confirmation, fee and routing outcomes remain probabilistic and market-dependent. Consensus validity does not guarantee fast inclusion, privacy, low cost, liquidity or protection from a mistaken recipient.
Inspect destinations, amounts, fee rate and status before acting. Use reproducible wallet data, preserve recovery metadata and test the workflow with a small amount before relying on it at scale.
A channel starts with on-chain funding; capacity and liquidity direction constrain payments.
For the clearest picture, read this entry together with Lightning Network, HTLC, Lightning liquidity, Lightning Watchtower. The reverse links also lead from Confirmation, Double-spend, HTLC, Lightning Watchtower.