Does Lightning Network has concept of continuous stream of value?

Examples:

Car insurance: $1000 per year.
Legal consultation: $500 per hour.
Visiting a website: $100 per hour.

Assuming 1 BTC = $8000

1 hour = $100 = 0.0125 BTC = 1,250,000 sat

1 second = 1,250,000 sat / 3600 = 347.22 sat

I could generate a new invoice and pay it every second.

Continous stream of value?

I was thinking about something else:

until further notice, please charge me 3472.22 sat per second

To avoid me going offline, there could 10 second heartbeat.

Is it overcomplicated?

Because of speed of light limit and network propagation, 1s resolution is good enough, no need for a continous stream of value.

Issuing a new invoice every second is a simple workaround and no need to overcomplicate.

Or maybe it exists natively?

EDIT / UPDATE: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc/wiki/Brainstorming#streaming-payments

Mars Robertson

Posted 2019-06-02T12:14:46.347

Reputation: 289

Answers

Streaming payments is not part of the lightning network protocol yet.

However you can build a lightning app that simulates exactly this. There was a demo by alekos Filini on lädt years lightning residency. Check out https://youtu.be/IlSVTir_9Ns

When AMP is coming streaming payments could be stimulated with AMP by setting up more and more routes. But that would be rather fancy.

So I guess you create an app on top of lightning to solve streaming payments

Rene Pickhardt

Posted 2019-06-02T12:14:46.347

Reputation: 6 565

However you can build a lightning app that simulates exactly this. - I'm stealing this idea. Not exactly stealing because I feel partially responsible of thinking about it, just not being fully aware if this is already a part of the protocol... Also related: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc/issues/399 (seems like the receiving node needs to create the invoice first in order to receive a payment) – Mars Robertson – 2019-06-02T15:43:06.557