Lightening Network in Bitcoin -things you should know

What is Lightening Network --
The lightening network is a second layer payment protocol that operates on blockchain.It features a person-to-person system for making micropayments of digital cryptocurrency through a network of bidirectional payment channels without delegating custody of funds or trust to third parties.Lightning is a decentralized network using smart contract functionality in the blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants.

Lightening Network in Bitcoin?--
yes,Lightening network is coming in bitcoin .currently The transaction fees on the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed to new all-time highs of over $30 in the past couple of months, but a new scaling solution might save the day for the digital currency in 2018.

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How does it work--

The Lightning Network is a system of smart contracts built on top of the base Bitcoin blockchain that allows for fast, cheap payments directly between two parties. In order to achieve these fast and cheap transactions, the following steps are taken.

A multi-signature wallet which holds some amount of bitcoin (provided by at least one of both parties) is set up
The wallet address is then saved to the public Bitcoin blockchain including a balance sheet (smart contract) that proves how much of this bitcoin deposits belongs to whom.

After this payment channel is set up once, it is possible for these two parties to conduct an unlimited amount of transactions without ever touching the information stored on the blockchain.

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With each transaction, both parties sign an updated balance sheet in order to always reflect how much of the bitcoin stored in the multi-sig wallet belongs to whom.

The updated balance sheet is not uploaded to the blockchain but rather both parties keep a copy of it.

Whenever there is a dispute or the payment channel is closed, both parties can use the most recent mutually signed balance sheet to pay out their share of the multi-sign wallet.

Benefits--

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1-Payments are settled instantly: The money is sent in the time it takes to cross the network to your destination and back, typically a fraction of a second.

2-Tiny payments are possible: Since fees are proportional to the payment amount, you can pay a fraction of a cent; accounting is even done in thousandths of a satoshi.

3-Capable of millions to billions of transactions per second across the network. Capacity blows away legacy payment rails by many orders of magnitude. Attaching payment per action/click is now possible without custodians.

4- By transacting and settling off-blockchain, the Lightning Network allows for exceptionally low fees, which allows for emerging use cases such as instant micropayments.

Shortcomings--

1-Peer failures: If one of the peers is unresponsive, users might have to wait for hours to close a payment channel and resend the funds via an alternative route.

2-No Offline Payments: Users can’t pay someone who is not online.

3-Not ideal for large payments: Even though a route via various payment channels might exist, the funds in the peers multi-sig wallets might not be sufficient to transfer large funds.

4-Centralization: The Lightning Network might encourages centralization in payment hubs .

5-Improved privacy: Not every transaction is stored on the public blockchain, only once when the payment chanel is eventually closed and the balance is paid out to both parties

** When will Lightning Network be launched?**

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Currently, there is a Proof-of-Concept implementation running on the Bitcoin Testnet. So everybody can try out the Lightning Network and even set up their own Lightning Node. A date when the Lightning Network will be launched on the Bitcoin is not yet set, but chances are high it will be sometime this year.

WHAT YOU THINK ?

Will Lightning Network restore Bitcoins functionality of being a fast and efficient medium of exchange?

When will we see a full implementation of Lightning Network on the Bitcoin?

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