Quote from: d5000 on June 30, 2017, 04:53:14 AM

You may think I begin trolling now Wink

... but I mostly agree with your analysis. I have discussed, above all, the "channel exhaustion" (=channels that lose the "routing power") problem with other users and no solution (that doesn't involve a centralized entity) has been found.

For me, LN was never more than a semi-centralized micropayment solution that is better than a totally-centralized online wallet because the "bank" cannot run away with my money. I would be happy if I can manage all my 0-20USD payments via LN and having at least 10 different hubs to chose from.

Amen. Indeed, the HUGE difference between a LN P2P network and another P2P network, is that connecting, and disconnecting, is expensive. The whole strength of decentralized P2P networks protocols is the easiness of setting up tunnels and breaking them ; but with the LN, your funds are engaged (with lock up time, and fees to unlock them).

Moreover, the LN is dangerous if the block chain is limited, because there cannot be "simultaneous settling". In the case of an exchange that goes down for instance, all customers will want to settle their channels simultaneously, and that will be so many transactions, that a hard limited block chain like bitcoin will push a lot of transactions over the lock out time, meaning that the exchange can, after all, run with their funds.