Does Lightning Network has concept of continuous stream of value?

Question

Examples:

• Car insurance: $1000 per year.
• Legal consultation: $500 per hour.
• Visiting a website: $100 per hour.

Assuming 1 BTC = $8000

1 hour = $100 = 0.0125 BTC = 1,250,000 sat

1 second = 1,250,000 sat / 3600 = 347.22 sat

I could generate a new invoice and pay it every second.

Continous stream of value?

I was thinking about something else:

until further notice, please charge me 3472.22 sat per second

To avoid me going offline, there could 10 second heartbeat.

Is it overcomplicated?

Because of speed of light limit and network propagation, 1s resolution is good enough, no need for a continous stream of value.

Issuing a new invoice every second is a simple workaround and no need to overcomplicate.

Or maybe it exists natively?

EDIT / UPDATE: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc/wiki/Brainstorming#streaming-payments

Answer 1

Streaming payments is not part of the lightning network protocol yet.

However you can build a lightning app that simulates exactly this. There was a demo by alekos Filini on lädt years lightning residency. Check out https://youtu.be/IlSVTir_9Ns

When AMP is coming streaming payments could be stimulated with AMP by setting up more and more routes. But that would be rather fancy.

So I guess you create an app on top of lightning to solve streaming payments