Indeed - Raiden is all about payment channels - funds are deposited on the main chain and then payments can be sent over channels with no fee. Only in the case of dispute or cashing out is the main chain used to resolve the conflict. This means you could make many transactions per second of very small amounts (useful for things like gambling sites or micro-payments for content). Micro-Raiden is already active which are one-to-one payment channels - the full Raiden network is not yet live but will facilitate one-to-many channels.

* https://raiden.network/faq.html

* https://raiden.network/micro.html

You are correct, and the name Raiden is a reference to the Mortal Kombat character who shoots lightning from his fingertips.

µRaiden (two-party transfers only, no routing) is already live on Ethereum mainnet: https://raiden.network/micro.html