Batch settlement and finality
Wholesale flows between institutions do not need per-payment anchoring. A single anchored batch settlement call clears up to roughly 9,000 transfers in one Bitcoin transaction, with Bitcoin's finality.
#Batch settlement
Interbank obligations accumulated across a business day, or across a Lightning corridor's net position, settle in one anchored, auditable SCL call. The batch's write-set is folded into the state root like any other call. Batch settlement is also the unit on which value-based settlement fees are levied: the fee follows the value settled rather than the instruction count. See XRB and network economics.
#The corridor lifecycle
A corridor runs in three repeating phases:
- Distribution. Clients hold instruments in Lightning channels with their bank's hub and pay instantly, across currencies through AMM hops.
- Netting. Hubs accumulate inter-hub and inter-bank positions inside channels, without touching Bitcoin.
- Settlement. Net positions settle by batch calls and channel adjustments anchored to Bitcoin, restoring distribution capacity.
Supervisors observe all three phases through observer nodes, and auditors can replay all three from public anchors plus member-provided data.
#Finality characteristics
Stated plainly for risk assessment:
- Bitcoin finality is probabilistic. Conventional confirmation depths are reached in 30 to 60 minutes.
- One-block reorganisations occur several times a year. Nodes keep undo logs and a 144-block journal and replay them automatically. See Settlement and validation.
- Base-layer throughput is low, which is why the network batches, and why instant movement happens on Lightning with Bitcoin-paced finality behind it.
None of these limits is disqualifying for wholesale settlement, where final settlement within an hour compares favourably with T+2 correspondent chains. Each belongs in partner due-diligence materials, and this page states them so a risk committee does not have to find them.