Lightning network: what it is and will it save Bitcoin?

A lot of people right now talks about TLN, a new “layer” for blockchain technology that can help a Bitcoin. Slow transactions and high fees are the main issues of Bitcoin transactions right now, will Lightning Network repair them?



                What is The Lightning Network?

“The Lightning Network (TLN) is a decentralized network using smart contract functionality in the blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants.” – as creators say on their website.
In simple words, it will help speeding up transactions. TLN creates new payment channel and makes transactions without giving detailed informations in the blockchain. New transactions are made “outside” of the blockchain. Because of it, there can be serious safety issues. To prevent them, TLN uses “smart contracts”.
Creating process of TLN started some time ago and last months showed that it needs to be realized as soon as possible.

                How can it save crypto?

Right now TLN contains more than 600 nodes and around 2000 channels, a lot of companies and programmers have already tested a new technology. Last week another company joined Lightning team – TorGuard. For now, TLN is in a test version, it means that it is not fully finished and can have problems with “missing” transactions. But you not should be worried about it, because TorGuard will cover all potential losses from using TLN, as they said on their Twitter “testnet is boring”.
With high fees and speed of transactions, it is hard to use Bitcoin as a payment method, that’s why more companies don’t allow it as possible payment.
We need to say that, using Lightning Network right now can be risky, but with time it will get better and there are more pros coming from implementation it than cons. One of the biggest pros is a speed of transactions, what’s more fees will be much lower. Right now, the cost of a transaction is around 500 Satoshi per byte with regular methods and 50 Satoshi with TLN.