A channel is like placing an abacus between you and someone else. when you pay them, you are sliding beads of the abacus to their side. Now imagine you have 10 abacuses with 10 different people, and they have 10 abacuses with 10 other people as well. Now, your payment can hop abacus to abacus, sliding the beads, until it gets to the end recipient.
That is the lightning network: thousands of abacuses between peers with different amount of beads on each abacus.
Thats my best shot at it :)
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Thanks, you made me realize that the post should have a short overview of what we're trying to achieve before going into the details. I used that line there
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