Here is an analogy of how nodes gossips with each others :
In a relay race competition there are 4 runners, Alice, Bob, Carrol & Daniel. Alice has run 10 meters & then handle her baton to Bob. Then Bob has to run another 10 meters & handle his baton to Carrol. Carrol also has to run the same distance & finish the race by handling the baton to Daniel. Think of the baton as the sats.
The routing logic is similar to the way TOR works. Between the sender's node & recipient's node there is/are routing node. Routing node forward sats in return for small fees. The sats are cryptographically locked using HTLC. Basically the payments either 100% success or not happening at all.
You could avoid fees by having direct "channel" towards your recipient ( no intermediary therefore no fee ).
Routing node has to online 24/7. Not everyone should run routing node!. You can just run private/unannounced node & still make payments.Private node does not route txs but can go offline as long as you can trust your peer to not rug you
Here is an analogy of how nodes gossips with each others :
In a relay race competition there are 4 runners, Alice, Bob, Carrol & Daniel. Alice has run 10 meters & then handle her baton to Bob. Then Bob has to run another 10 meters & handle his baton to Carrol. Carrol also has to run the same distance & finish the race by handling the baton to Daniel. Think of the baton as the sats.
The routing logic is similar to the way TOR works. Between the sender's node & recipient's node there is/are routing node.
Routing node forward sats in return for small fees. The sats are cryptographically locked using HTLC. Basically the payments either 100% success or not happening at all.
You could avoid fees by having direct "channel" towards your recipient ( no intermediary therefore no fee ).
Routing node has to online 24/7. Not everyone should run routing node!. You can just run private/unannounced node & still make payments.Private node does not route txs but can go offline as long as you can trust your peer to not rug you