The Lightning Torch Revisited

In Part 4, on Day 132, the story of the Lightning torch was covered. A payment that passed through 292 people across 56 countries in 2019, started by a Twitter user called @hodlonaut.

At the time, it was told as a human story — a demonstration of Bitcoin’s global community and the Lightning Network’s reach.

Now you have the technical picture to understand what was actually happening.

Every time the torch was passed, a Lightning payment was being routed through the global channel network. Each recipient added 10,000 satoshis and forwarded the accumulated amount to the next person. The payment hopped across existing channels — some direct, some routing through intermediate nodes — settling in seconds, with fees of fractions of a cent.

The 292nd recipient held a payment that had been routed across six continents, through dozens of intermediate nodes, without a single bank, payment processor, or correspondent institution involved.

When Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, held the torch for a moment, he was participating in a payment network that required no permission from Twitter’s payments infrastructure, no Visa network, no correspondent banking relationship. He was just another node.

The torch eventually reached its maximum capacity and ended — not because the technology failed, but because the payment had grown too large for available channel liquidity along the remaining paths. A practical demonstration of Lightning’s current limitations as much as its capabilities.

Both things are true. The network worked across 56 countries. And it hit a ceiling. Understanding both is what makes Lightning interesting rather than just impressive.

Tomorrow: sending your first Lightning payment — what the experience is like.

— The Daily Bit