How to use the Lightning Network

What you’ll learn

• The problem Lightning solves
• Setting up a custodial Lightning Wallet
• Setting up a non-custodial Lightning Wallet
• Setting up a full node on the Lightning network

Right now, Bitcoin is an excellent store of value but slow and expensive for everyday transactions, which is where the Lightning Network comes in. The so-called layer two solution means Bitcoin users can have their cake and eat it. Fast, cheap bitcoin transactions without compromising on security. Learn how to use the Lightning Network.



For the Bitcoin network to rival existing payment systems like Visa, it must be able to process transactions faster (much faster) and at a fraction of the cost of existing fees. But this scaling cannot be achieved at the expense of decentralisation or security. This conundrum has become known as the Bitcoin trilemma.

An attempt to solve it by simply increasing the capacity of blocks led to the bitter chain wars and the creation of Bitcoin Cash in 2017, followed by Bitcoin SV in 2018. Neither has resulted in an effective way to transact quickly and cheaply on-chain, yet retain Satoshi’s design, underlining the challenge of scaling Bitcoin as a payment network through its existing consensus method.