Also, miners might start to supplement their income by hosting LN Nodes and getting fees from forwarding people's tx's. If they stop mining, then the Lightning Network will stop functioning and they will not get any fees from both the LN and the miners fees from their Bitcoin mining.
So in my opinion the Lightning Network actually supplement their income or it might just balance it out, when the Block reward decline.
So in my opinion the Lightning Network actually supplement their income or it might just balance it out, when the Block reward decline.
I don't think if setting up Lightning Nodes will be profitable for them. Lightning Network earnings are quite small and might not be worth the hassle of balancing thousands of channels. If some miners decided to stop mining due to low profitability then the difficulty would drop resulting in higher profit for those who continued to mine. None second-layer solution will replace on-chain transactions. Miners will continue to earn from on-chain fees. What is more profitable for an average miner? Small blocks and spikes in transaction fees or big blocks and small fees?
They are obviously not going to have 1 or 2 channels, but 1000's. The point is, the Lightning Network is not taking away miners fees for them, if they are also hosting Lightning Network nodes. It is a complete change for some of them, but it will supplement income if the Block reward falls away.
Millions of small tx's can also be profitable, even if it is still "small" now. The bigger picture is a business plan change from mining "Only" Bitcoin with ASIC's to a combination, where the miners also host Lightning Network nodes.
