Published
5 years ago on
October 31, 2018
“Normally, making a payment on a network like Stellar involves publishing details of the payment to all observers, paying a small fee, and waiting for the network to reach consensus and confirm the payment.â€He continues to say:
“A payment channel, on the other hand, uses the network to lock up some funds for use by the channel’s participants. They may then pay each other these funds without further involving the network. Such payments are thus private, instant, and free.â€It was previously reported by Crypto Briefing that the system gets more complicated when there are over two users involved.
“Multi-hop payments have proven to be the Achilles’ heel of the Lightning Network, causing long delays and unexpected complications.â€Currently, the design for Starlight is only meant for a two-party settlement but the blog post indicates that this is just the first step of many.
“Starlight payment channels are analogous to the Bitcoin payment channels used in the Lightning Network. As we extend the Starlight project to support not only payment channels but also multi-hop payments across those channels, we plan to build in compatibility with other payment-channel networks, such as Lightning and Interledger.â€Despite all this, it’s probably the right to pop the champagne. The testnet demo isn’t very practical and has limited use and developers have even warned about bugs and incompatible updates. Fanatics of Starlight probably won’t stop dreaming of a future where payments are fast, smooth, and effective. What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!
