Lightning network

The Lightning Network is a proposed token transfer network operating at a layer above the Bitcoin blockchain (and other public blockchains), enabling improvement of many orders of magnitude in transaction throughput by moving the majority of transactions outside of the consensus ledger into so-called “payment channels”. This is made possible by on-chain cryptocurrency scripts, which enable parties to enter into bilateral stateful contracts where the state can be updated by sharing digital signatures, and contracts can be closed by finally publishing evidence onto the blockchain, a mechanism first popularized by cross-chain atomic swaps. By opening payment channels with many parties, participants in the Lightning Network can become focal points for routing the payments of others, leading to a fully connected payment channel network, at the cost of capital being tied up on payment channels.

ライトニングネットワークは、ビットコインブロックチェーンより上の位相で動くトークン移転ネットワークだ。取引の大部分を、コンセンサス台帳の外側にあるいわゆる「決済チャネル」に移すことで、取引量の拡大を可能にしている。

While the Lightning Network can also easily extend across multiple independent blockchains to allow for the transfer of value via an exchange market, it cannot be used to asymmetrically transfer tokens from one blockchain to another. The main benefit of the Cosmos network described here is to enable such direct token transfers. That said, we expect payment channels and the Lightning Network to become widely adopted along with our token transfer mechanism, for cost-saving and privacy reasons.

ライトニングネットワークは複数の独立したブロックチェーン間で市場を通した価値の移転を容易に可能にするけれども、非対称的なトークン移転には利用できない。