Lightning Invoice
A Lightning invoice is a signed payment request — a long lnbc… string — that names an amount, a description, and a payment hash the payer must satisfy to settle.
Why it matters
The invoice is the reason Lightning UX is hard. It is single-use, it expires, and it has to be generated by the recipient before any money can move. Every friendlier layer in the stack — LNURL, Lightning Address, Keysend — exists to hide it or route around it.
For Value 4 Value the problem is structural rather than cosmetic: a podcast app paying four recipients every minute cannot stop to ask four servers for a fresh invoice each time.
How it works
The payer decodes the string to learn the amount, destination and payment hash, then routes a payment along channels toward the destination. The recipient reveals the preimage — the secret behind the hash — which both settles the payment and proves it was paid.
Keysend inverts this: the sender generates the preimage and puts it in the onion, so no invoice is needed at all.
Sources
- BOLT 11, the invoice format: https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/11-payment-encoding.md
Heard on the show
2 moments across 2 episodes.
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E147 · 22 Sep 2023 · Like Lavender
- 35:37mean, even if you just sent a lightning invoice so there'stranscript
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E138 · 23 Jun 2023 · Lost on Wood
- 1:37:34Allen says, you can now boost by simply paying a single lightning invoice on contracts dot app slash support for all the lazytranscript
From chapter titles, show notes, the PC 2.0 Timeline and the clip notes. Where those say nothing, from the episode transcript — which reaches further but only records that a word was said. 214 of 266 episodes have curated notes; 177 moments come from transcripts.