/biz/ - Business & Finance

some of you guys are alright

every once in a while if i get sad, i look at this image and i get a little smile on my face.

>>20172530
"I prefer the abacus analogy, since the channels are in fact bidirectional.
Think of the channel as the wire of an abacus. The number of beads cannot be changed: this is the channel capacity.
However, you can slide the beads: this is the Lightning transaction, in which the ownership of the funds changes from your local balance (can send) to the remote balance (can receive), and vice versa.
When you open a channel, all the beads are on your side of the wire (local balance = can spend). This is why at the beginning you can only spend.
To be able to receive, you can either:
- spend some funds, to "balance" the channel = have beads on each side of the wire
- or ask someone (e.g. rent a channel from Stakenet's hub) to open an inbound channel (where all the beads will be on the other side = remote balance = can receive)."

tl;dr
They get paid in trading fees for opening/maintaining channels and liquidity