The Lightning Network[1] is seen as the main solution in the Bitcoin ecosystem for making small BTC transactions feasible, as it enables the smallest of payments to be sent for nearly no fees.
Indeed, Lightning has come a long way since first being designed in 2015 and having gone live in 2018. There are now over 88,000 public channels holding over 4,000 BTC, according to data from Txstats.com[2].
The Bitcoin overlay network enjoyed substantial growth over the past year after it was put front and center in global media with the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender by El Salvador. The move conferred much legitimacy to Lightning as it became clear to the world that bitcoin could indeed be used to purchase daily goods[3].
While there is still much work to be done[4] for a global adoption of the Lightning Network to become realistically possible, the protocol has solidified its position as the main scaling solution for Bitcoin payments.
However, due to the Lightning Network’s design of interconnected channels, payments sent across the network are not guaranteed to succeed and hence decisions must be made as to in what way the wallet should prioritize payment flow. One example of this is prioritizing by routing fees, which is the most popular prioritization; it seeks to pick a path in the network that entails minimized fee expenditure for the sender[5].
A path in the Lightning Network refers to the route taken by a Lightning payment from sender to recipient across different channels. Routing allows the payment to be made between a given sender and receiver without requiring the two parties to open
