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Benefits and Tradeoffs of the Lightning Network
Understand the unique advantages and inherent risks of Lightning. Learn when and why it's the right tool to use.
Course length: 0 mins 4 secs
Passing score: 80%
How Lightning achieves millions of transactions per second with sub-second settlement while preserving Bitcoin's core properties of decentralization, censorship resistance, and security.
How Lightning's fee structure enables payments as small as a single satoshi, unlocking micropayments, content monetization, streaming sats, machine-to-machine payments, and the Value-for-Value model.
How Lightning provides significantly better transaction privacy than on-chain Bitcoin through onion routing, the absence of a public ledger, and ephemeral payment data.
An honest examination of Lightning's tradeoffs including hot wallet exposure, liquidity constraints, channel management complexity, force-close risks, and privacy limitations.