The original Bitcoin blockchain is broken. Transaction fees are too high and confirmation times are too long. These issues arise due to the Bitcoin networks’ inability to handle large number of transactions.

One of the solutions provided is Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash is the product of a fork in the Bitcoin blockchain where some portion of the community decided to increase the block size to fit more transactions per block. This is essentially like constructing additional lanes on a highway to accommodate more traffic and to reduce congestion. This solution, while effective in the short term, does not provide a scalable solution.

Other cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and Ethereum provide much faster transaction times at much smaller transaction fees. They way they do so is through the use of “off-ledger” payment channels. The Bitcoin community is following suit by creating its own offline payment network called the lightning network.

The lightning network operates in parallel with the Bitcoin network. At its core, two users are connected to one another and can perform offline transactions without the need to place them into blocks, hence solving Bitcoins’ biggest problems — transaction fees and time.