Research corpus ScalingBLC-PAPER-0004

The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments

Lightning is a payment channel on Bitcoin. The base chain is the court when a party cheats or leaves, not the till for every payment.

Official external source only
Design paper
Official source

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Record

Authors: Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja
Date: 2016 draft. Cite the PDF you opened. Versions of this paper differ.
Publisher: Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja
Version: PDF linked from lightning.network. Not a specification of today's channel implementations.
Document ID: BLC-PAPER-0004
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.

Direct answer

Lightning is a payment channel on Bitcoin. The base chain is the court when a party cheats or leaves, not the till for every payment.

The study is the reading. This record does not transcribe the paper.

Why it is in the corpus

It is the document that says how two parties can update a balance many times and involve the chain only to open, dispute, or close.
Hashed timelocks are how the paper routes a payment across channels. Liquidity is a separate problem.

Where to read

Official source — lightning.network paper
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. Read the PDF at the publisher.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

Claims and assumptions

Blockchain Lab's reading of what the document is doing. Not a quotation and not the source text.

A channel is a shared output plus a rule that punishes an old state.
The chain is used when the channel is opened, disputed, or closed.

Assumptions

Bitcoin's scripting, as the paper specified it.
Parties who watch the chain, or someone watching for them, before a timelock expires.

What changed

Running implementations, fee markets, and liquidity services came after the draft. The study says what the paper itself contains.

Relationships

Canonical readingLightning study
Sits onBitcoin
ProposesOff-chain updates, on-chain dispute
Protocol profileLightning profile
CompareChannel and chain

Construct with this

A pattern link for people designing a system. It is not a claim that this paper is a product specification, and it is not permission to copy anyone’s code.

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Poon, J., & Dryja, T. (2016). The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments. Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja. https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf

BibTeX

@techreport{lightning2016,
  title = {The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments},
  author = {Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja},
  year = {2016},
  institution = {Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja},
  url = {https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/lightning}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments
AU  - Joseph Poon
AU  - Thaddeus Dryja
PY  - 2016
PB  - Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja
UR  - https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-PAPER-0004",
    "title": "The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Joseph Poon"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Thaddeus Dryja"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2016
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja",
    "URL": "https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

JSON BibTeX file RIS file CSL-JSON

Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. Read the PDF at the publisher.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections