Lightning allows two parties to make payments through a shared channel without recording every transfer on Bitcoin's main blockchain. When they cannot agree to close it either party can publish an already signed transaction to settle the balance.
However, the channel's rules require the party initiating the closure to wait before spending its share. The safeguard gives the other party time to challenge an attempt to close using an outdated channel balance. The Lightning specification calls this waiting rule to_self_delay.
The research found a median waiting period of 2.5 days for the 2026 public-channel sample. Across the full study period, the median was 1.7 days. These figures measure when funds become eligible to move, not when a later withdrawal transaction confirms.
Nearly half of the observed delay settings were 144 blocks, or about one day. One in ten were set to roughly two weeks.
Kumar also calculated the annual return at which the cost of waiting would match the fees paid to close a channel. That break-even figure stood at 1.2% in 2026, compared with 16.7% across the full period.
