It seems to me that ever since the transaction fees skyrocketed steadily and the backlog filled up with unconfirmed transactions, everyone's been discussing how the LN could change that.

My questions are:

1. When is LN expected to be implemented? Given the current state of the network, this has to be priority number 1 for the Bitcoin Core devs. So a concrete date or at least a rough estimate should be on the table. Not "some time in 2018".

2. Is there anyone that can prevent it from happening? Like the miners, for instance, because the current status quo is in their favor, and the way I see it, they got no reason to lose out on miner fees. Hence, could they do something to stop LN or delay it considerably?