Common Knowledge Base Association (CKBA) (@ckba_build): Lightning can hide a payment and still leak the map around it.

Lightning can hide a payment and still leak the map around it. For wallets to find routes, the network has to publish a channel graph, so every announced channel's capacity and the Bitcoin funding transaction behind it are public. That funding transaction is the seam between the two layers. It is also what researchers actually attack. One study linked 45.97% of Lightning nodes to Bitcoin addresses using nothing but public channel-funding data. And because routing concentrates in a handful of large nodes, a five-year study published in December 2025 warns of a growing concentration of routing, so an adversary only has to run a few well-connected nodes to watch a lot of traffic. The payment stays private, the infrastructure carrying it does not.