A channel not announced to the rest of the network.
The channel partners can send and receive payments between each other as normal.
However the rest of the network will not ve aware of it and so cannot use it to route payments.
As the number of and capacity of private channels is unknown, the total public channel count and capacity only accounts for a portion of the total Lightning Network.
preimage::
In mathematics, given a function $f$ and a value $h$ the preimage of $h$ with respect to $f$ is the set of values $R = \{r_1,r_2,...\}$ such that $f(r_i) = h$ for all $\r_i \in R$.
In layman's terms, it is the set of values which is mapped to $h$ by the function $f$.
@ -351,6 +357,7 @@ preimage::
Cryptographers use the term preimage for an arbitrary element of $R$.
In particular, when using SHA-256 we should state that each element has an infinite amount of preimages.
Yet it is still believed to be computationally hard to find such a preimage.
proof of work::
A piece of data that requires significant computation to find. In Bitcoin, miners must find a numeric solution to the SHA256 algorithm that meets a network-wide target, the difficulty target.