A brief history of the Lightning Network

The Bitcoin community has long been baffled by the scalability issue. The speed of transactions fell, and the network fees grew. In 2015 Thaddeus Dria and Joseph Poon proposed a solution called the Lightning Network. The idea was to carry out some of the transactions outside the network, thereby reducing the load on the BTC blockchain. In 2018, the Lightning Network was launched in Bitcoin.

The Lightning Network is a system that helps users move funds among themselves without having to use a blockchain to verify a transaction. Instead, there is a quick check of funds from the sender and a request from the recipient who agrees to the transaction.

Problems that may arise when sending Lightning Network

1. If an error occurs when you try to send the Lightning Network, then most likely it happened due to the lack of channels. The Lightning Network requires links between nodes. If your wallet allows you to open channels yourself, then you can open a channel with FixedFloat.
   FixedFloat Node:
   037f990e61acee8a7697966afd29dd88f3b1f8a7b14d625c4f8742bd952003a590@lnd.fixedfloat.com:9735
   
   For more information on how to do this, see our article "How to start using the Lightning Network?".
2. If you see a "Payment in transit" message when sending the Lightning Network, it means the Lightning Network has been sent, but there is a problem with intermediate nodes. You need to wait for the final invoice payment or refund.

Lightning Network Speed and Fees

Since transactions on the Lightning Network do not end up on the blockchain, they are almost instantaneous. But if one of the intermediate nodes is off the network, the transaction may be delayed.

The fee depends on the intermediate channels through which the payment passes. Usually it is almost zero. But it so happens that some channels charge a high fee for passing the payment. It can reach up to 1% of the amount.

A brief history of Stellar Lumens

Stellar is a publicly available decentralized marketplace with various assets in circulation. The platform also has its own open source cryptocurrency Stellar Lumens (XLM).

The currency is based on the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), which is similar in principle to the BFT protocol of the Ripple platform, but has a significant difference — all network validators are equivalent, there are no central control nodes in the blockchain. XLM coin is more decentralized than Ripple, but less decentralized than Proof-Of-Work cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum).

Getting started with XLM

If this is your first time using an XLM account, you need to activate it. To do this, you need to send at least 1 XLM to it. As soon as the transfer arrives at your wallet, it will become active. This is done to protect against spam.
To store this currency, you can pay attention to special wallets Solar wallet and Lobstr.

What is a Memo and do I need to specify it?

When sending XLM, there is an additional Memo field. Memo is the ID of the payment. It is unique, and with its help the service identifies the sender and recipient. Many services have address protection, which does not allow transactions without Memo.

If you forgot to specify a Memo or entered it incorrectly, check if the transaction was sent. If the transaction is not sent, please write to our technical support. If the transaction has already been sent, you should write to the technical support service of the service to which you sent it.

Stellar Lumens blockchain speed and fees

XLM is considered to be a fast blockchain. The transaction is confirmed in a few seconds. The commission is very small, on average 0.00001 XLM.