I've heard mentions about the lightning network quite a lot in previous years, but never got what the implementation was. I get it it's "offchain transactions", but how does it relate to bitcoin, exactly? Is it "sidechains", like lisk (each third party managing its own blockchain), or is it simply "outsourcing" money and transactions and waiting for a general report from the trusted party to engrave it in the blockchain?
It seems to work by setting up channels of funds between entities. To create a channel and fund it requires a bitcoin transaction. Payments from the fund to the recipient can then proceed off-chain to a maximum of the fund amount, then another on-chain transaction settles it.
This sounds somewhat cumbersome, but AFAICT the gains apparently come from routing between channels, so if A wants to pay B, and channels exist from A->C and C->B then payments can route that way, without the need for more on-chain transactions.
To me this sounds really quite complex, and also like it's going to involve intermediary 'hubs' which will process off-chain transactions and... well it sounds like banks and centralisation again, something the BTC crowd apparently hate.
I see, thanks for the explanation. As is, it kind of seems to defeat the idea of the blockchain, dropping it to do a meaningful amount of transactions. But it's well over my head, I'll wait and see how it plays out.
