{"document_id":"BLC-STUDY-0667","slug":"lightning-bolts","title":"Basis of Lightning Technology: the public protocol specifications","authors":"Lightning protocol authors","year":2016,"date_label":"2016","publisher":"Lightning protocol authors","paper_type":"Design paper","category":"Scaling","topics":["Scaling"],"source_url":"https://github.com/lightning/bolts","source_label":"Lightning BOLTs","legacy_pdf_path":null,"sha256":null,"sha256_note":"No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.","version":"Source cited by the 2016 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.","doi":null,"rights_status":"Official external source only","source_status":"Official source","use_status":"Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.","licence":null,"licence_label":"No licence recorded. Rights status under review.","full_text":null,"full_text_reason":"Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.","repository":"https://github.com/lightning/bolts","editorial_line":"The BOLTs are the public specification of Lightning: channels, commitments, and routed payments on top of Bitcoin, not a single company's product.","canonical_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/whitepaper/lightning-bolts","record_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/lightning-bolts","study_url":"https://blockchainlab.com/whitepaper/lightning-bolts","last_reviewed":"2026-10-01","last_checked":"2026-10-01","relationships":[{"rel":"Canonical reading","label":"Lightning BOLTs study","href":"/whitepaper/lightning-bolts"},{"rel":"Related paper","label":"Lightning","href":"/whitepaper/lightning"},{"rel":"Related paper","label":"Eltoo","href":"/whitepaper/eltoo"},{"rel":"Related paper","label":"Bitcoin","href":"/whitepaper/bitcoin-nakamoto"}]}