Lightning is a network of payment channels, where people lock bitcoin into a multisignature address, and update the state of balance distributions off-chain. It’s how we are going to scale Bitcoin.

The Lightning Network is a series of pre-signed transactions to enforce a balance distribution between users, plus the other mechanisms involved in updating that distribution and synchronizing those updates between users all across the network.

But doesn’t that also describe Ark? Or statechains? Yes. That’s my point.

The core idea of Lightning is just updating agreements about how to distribute funds off-chain, while ensuring that the most recent version of that agreement can be enforced on-chain if needed, without room for an involved party to “cheat the system” and enforce a more favorable past agreement.

There are many different ways to achieve that goal. The way used currently is simply the first concrete way that was specified. There are, and can be, more and different ways to do that. Over time the methods and tools for accomplishing that goal will change.

Maybe some new way will completely obsolete an older way. Maybe some new way works better in a certain scenario or situation. But new ways will definitely come, and that’s okay.

Some things will completely change, others will only be slight variations of what came before, but Lightning will shapeshift over time. It needs to in order to continue scaling in the long term, to solve its own problems, to help bitcoin function as a money.

Lightning will evolve.