This provides Alice with true offline receive - she doesn’t need to be online in order to receive the full Lightning payment. Additionally, Alice does not need to run a Lightning node and does not need to open any channels or perform any force closures. All operations here are atomic under the same 1/n or minority/n trust assumptions, as the operators must work together to recreate the preimage.
Sending a Lightning Payment
- Alice receives a Lightning invoice from Bob.
- Alice makes an API call to the Lightning payment provider, agreeing to conditionally transfer leaves upon payment completion.
- SE locks transfers on Alice’s specified leaves until a specified time.
- The payment provider makes a Lightning payment to pay Bob’s invoice.
- The payment provider submits proof of Lightning payment to the SE.
- SE finalizes the transfer of Alice’s leaves to the Lightning payment provider atomically.