Bitcoin Lighting network are known for its micro-payments, and yet people have little understanding of how powerful this can be.
I am going to break down piece by piece in a human readable language to explain the overall process.
let's say we have a Bob and Alice want to do a payment transaction with each other, they need to "open a conversation line" (payment channel). They each put 5 dollars into a shared "lockbox" (multisig address) to start a channel that allows two-way messages.
To prevent cheating, Alice and Bob make a signed "promise note" saying that if one takes the money early, they have to wait a long time to get the rest. Alice leaves the extra money for Bob, and Bob does the same for Alice.
They also exchange each other's secret "passcodes" (secrets) that only they know. Others can't take the money without the passcode. Now Alice can send $1 to Bob through their "conversation" by both updating the promise note and exchange new passcodes.
Bob can also pay Alice back $1, all without closing and reopening the channel each time. If one finds out the other's first passcode, they can take the rest of the money in the time waiting period to enforce honesty. By having a two-way conversation channel, Alice and Bob can make multiple small payments back and forth, just like texting! The network allows this to scale across many users as well. There are limations as well, the max amount of bitcoin they can tranfer has a hard cup with regard of their 'lockbox' amount. the more deposit on the channel, the more you can tranfer.
比特币闪电网络以微支付而闻名, 很多人可能不太清楚这个微支付到底有多强，我就用小学都能看的懂的例子解释一下
假设我们有两个人Alice和Bob想进行一笔交易,首先他们需要开通"联系线路"(这里指的就是支付通道), 他们必须每都向一个共享的"保险箱"(多重签名地址)里存一些钱,为了防止欺骗,Alice和Bob会签署一份"承诺书",上面写明如果提前取钱,就必须等非常久才能取剩下的(存的钱）
所以两个建立联系线路的交易对手，必须信任对方 同样，他也会交换对方的“密码”, 但是这个密码只有自己知道的，其他人如果拿到了密码，也取不走钱 Alice可以通过“聊天”将1块钱付给Bob, 并且全不用关闭或者重开通道，这歌通道可以一直存在，并且一直反复交易 有点类似发微信红包 当然，这个里面也有一些限制，如果存的钱只有5块，那么交易的最高上限就是5块切不能被超过 而通道内转账不需要生成和广播真实交易到比特币主链，是直接通道内通过更新状态来实现，不需要过链，也就意味着交易的频率可以达到很高且等待时间很短 当然了，闪电网络通道理论上支持非常大额和高频率的小额 Bitcoin 转账，但是这一切都取决于带宽和硬件
