Because in Lightning every payment is a smart contract that locks Bitcoin to someone that can present a secret that hashes to some specific value.
If written in english the contract would be kinda like this:
"Pays X bitcoin to anyone that can present a secret that hashes to Y".
Therefore, when you are requesting a payment, you need to inform the payee what is the hash Y. This information changes to every payment and its sent in the invoice. That's why Lightning can't use a static address.
There are ways around this issue, such as LNURL and BOLT12. Under the hood, there's still invoices being communicated between nodes, but you don't see it.
Lorenzo
npub1hx…jxw8z
2024-04-08 16:51:23 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…ctd6
Author Public Key
npub1hxfv24c6aj87ktc7a4fhuwste2hc0j2a3jc2a8rjd60nvvxrda8qcjxw8zSeen on
wss://nos.lolPublished at
2024-04-08 16:51:23 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Because in Lightning every payment is a smart contract that locks Bitcoin to someone that can present a secret that hashes to some specific value.\n\nIf written in english the contract would be kinda like this:\n\n\"Pays X bitcoin to anyone that can present a secret that hashes to Y\".\n\nTherefore, when you are requesting a payment, you need to inform the payee what is the hash Y. This information changes to every payment and its sent in the invoice. That's why Lightning can't use a static address.\n\nThere are ways around this issue, such as LNURL and BOLT12. Under the hood, there's still invoices being communicated between nodes, but you don't see it.",
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