Fake Channels Are Real: Why Client-Side-Validated Lightning Is Easier Than You Think

An unintuitive aspect of the Lightning protocol is that channels in the middle of your route don’t have to be real. If Alice is trying to pay BTC to David, through the route Alice ↔ Bob ↔ Charlie ↔ David, whether or not the Lightning channels between Bob and Charlie represent real channels with real Bitcoin doesn’t matter! Indeed, it doesn’t even matter to Alice whether or not David received…