Hey all.

You know the criticism: Bitcoin handles seven transactions per second, Visa does tens of thousands, so Bitcoin is too slow to be money. It's a lazy comparison, and one that's been dismantled plenty of times - but rarely from the ground up, which is what I've tried to do here with Bitcoin's Lightning Network.

Much like my other technical pieces, it’s a first principles explainer with interactive diagrams to illustrate the key concepts. Take a look:

How the Lightning Network actually works

It walks through payment channels, liquidity, scaling, and more. By the end you'll see why the base layer is slow on purpose, and what gets built on top to make it fast.

My favourite bit is the routing puzzle near the end: move 30,000 sats from Alice to Carol across a network where the obvious path is a dead end:

As always, hit reply if you have ideas or questions. And if you know someone who'd enjoy this, please forward it on.

One thing I've never mentioned in these emails: there's now a donations page that doubles as a public messageboard. Any Lightning tip over 1,000 sats (comfortably under a dollar at the current discount!) gets published there with your message. These tips pay for coffee and keep the guides coming.

Thanks all - keep stacking.

— Bennet