Lightning Network: Sending a single payment through multiple channels becomes a reality

After months of hard work and testing, finally one of the most widely used Lightning Network implementations of the LND protocol has seen functional multi-part payments.

What does it mean for Lightning Network?

Until now, if you wanted to send a payment such as 100,000 satoshi, you had to have an open channel like this. Respectively in somewhat larger value in the lightning network. However, in order for the payment to actually take place, it was necessary to have such large channels throughout the journey to the final destination to the payee.

At first glance, this improvement may not seem essential, but the opposite is true. Insufficient channel capacity along the payment path through the LN is one of the most common reasons for payment failure.

The payment of these 100,000 satoshi can now be divided into multiple parts and send in different ways, which should drastically improve the usability of the Lightning Network.

After many months of preparation, multi-part payment sending has finally landed in LND 0.10. Not only does this allow for better utilization of local channels, but it may also change the incentives for routing nodes. Large payments don’t necessarily need large channels anymore. pic.twitter.com/XnN2xcyVrA

— Joost Jager (@joostjgr) April 15, 2020

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