what interests me in particular is how Mr. Average will perceive lightning networks and how they'll be sold to him.
It's conceivable that users may choose to delegate absolutely everything to third parties. they might buy with fiat directly into already existing channels run by an exchange or coinbase equivalent and expect all channel management to handled by them as well.
even now with all the cool tools to hand, many, many people are too lazy and dumb to spend a few minutes learning how to take control for themselves and that's with something less complex than this.
i'll be the first to admit i don't understand a great deal about it but for now it still looks like a very cool experiment, not the savior of everything.
Oh holy Jesus that wall of text. Bro, your writings are too long. I highly doubt that this is because you are just so packed to the brim with deep insights and wisdom that it can't possibly be contained in anything less than an 8000 word essay. Learn how to say what you are trying to say concisely.
Well the topic is complex, but one simplified soundbite is that transaction fees will become too high on-chain for users to open HTLC payment channels on-chain, and thus they will be forced into fractional reserves which is what European Central Bank thinks they might do anyway, even if they could afford to open a channel on chain:
It's conceivable that users may choose to delegate absolutely everything to third parties. they might buy with fiat directly into already existing channels run by an exchange or coinbase equivalent and expect all channel management to handled by them as well.
I'll go so far as to say LN is virtually useless as an end-user protocol. It provides the technological base for the payment processors of the future. Some have compared it to the TCP/IP protocol. The analogy is:
Internet -> Bitcoin
TCP/IP -> Lightning Network
World Wide Web -> Layer 3
Anyway, the next generation of payment processors will be built atop LN, will absorb all risk associated with LN, and will provide users a foolproof layer 3 solution. And possibly fractional reserve banking and derivatives.