Lightning: the route on which small amounts work

Two sides lodge an amount in the main network once and settle between themselves after that, without entering each single payment there. Only when they close the channel does the result land back in the main network. In between lie any number of payments that arrive in seconds and cost almost nothing.

For a cashier that means deposits of twenty francs suddenly make sense, because the fee no longer hangs on the space taken up. That is precisely the difference that decides whether someone can play with small amounts without the fee eating a double-digit percentage.

Lightning demands ongoing work from the operator: channels have to be kept open and supplied with balance, and an operator who does not do that cannot accept payments. A cashier that only issues main-network addresses has none of that effort. So Lightning is simply not on offer in many cashiers, even where the same operator carries bitcoin explicitly.

This site's table therefore does not count Lightning as a settlement coin of its own: it is not another coin but another route for the same one. Anyone who wants to know whether a given cashier carries it will find the answer only in the cashier itself — in the drop-down beside «bitcoin».

The larger the amount, the less a network fee set by space taken up weighs. At a thousand francs the difference between the main network and Lightning is a footnote; at twenty francs it is the difference between sensible and absurd. The fees page shows the proportion in numbers.

From which follows a plain rule of thumb that needs no forecast: whoever deposits rarely and in larger steps does not need Lightning. Whoever deposits often and in small steps does — or a coin whose network fee is fixed and low anyway, as described on the USDT page.

What this page says about Lightning holds for the procedure and not for a particular operator. Which cashier carries which route stands in the cashier overview, and only where the cashier was actually opened.