Stellar Development Foundation publishes technical specifications and roadmap for implementing Lightning Network on Stellar, enabling instant, low-fee off-chain payments through state channels and payment channels.
The Stellar Development Foundation has released detailed technical documentation on implementing Lightning Network scaling solutions on Stellar. The specification explains how state channels—a generalization of payment channels—can be built on Stellar to enable off-chain transactions that settle back to the public ledger. Key innovations include leveraging Stellar's sequence number mechanism and introducing a new `BUMP_SEQUENCE` operation to manage channel versioning. The implementation supports not just payments but any Stellar operation (account creation, permission changes, etc.). The article includes theoretical foundations, protocol specifications with diagrams, update rules, and practical JavaScript SDK examples demonstrating how two parties can open a channel, transact off-chain, and close it without intermediate transactions hitting the blockchain.
