I invented the Lightning Network.

Well, not really. But to the best of my knowledge, I was the first person to write a post describing something similar to how LN is conceived today.

I’m not saying this to take credit for its advent – it’s not like I really did anything. Others have invented the concept of micropayment channels on which my suggestion relied, and I only threw out some rough ideas; I didn’t present a full-fledged design, let alone wrote any code.

I’m saying this to emphasize the point that for some of us, that has always been the vision. One of the first burning questions I had when I was first introduced to Bitcoin was how the whole thing was supposed to scale. Concepts I’ve learned of since then – like SPV and pruning – helped, but I wasn’t completely satisfied. Ever since I heard about channels and thought about how they could be used in a network, that would become one of the first things I would reference whenever discussions of scalability came up.

The ability to use an on-chain transaction to anchor a channel, so that real bitcoins can be sent over it without having to bother the entire network or wait for confirmations for every payment – in such a way that the channel can always be closed unilaterally to recover the funds as normal bitcoins sitting in an address you control – is an idea so powerful that I can’t imagine how can anyone resist falling in love with it.

But the reason I am so excited about the development of LN is not that the vision I had is finally being brought to life.

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