Quote from: d5000 on October 17, 2020, 05:49:13 PM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on October 17, 2020, 04:46:46 AM

I admire the optimism, but I don't know how an ordinary user will be expected to be in it long term, unless he/she is incentivized from the level of specialization in maintaining a Lightning node. But I see a debate for altruism to boot-strap the network.

For me, there are mainly two conditions for the Lightning Network to really take off:

1) Providers of massively used services must support it.

Yes, the exchanges. Onboarding exchanges must be one of the first priorities.

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2) It must be clear that transaction costs using LN are much smaller than without it.

I believe it will be obviously clear.

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Condition 1 is a chicken-and-egg problem. If there are many users, there will be many services, and vice versa. Ideally, some service providers could create something like a "beta area", where people can use LN to deposit and withdraw coins at their own risk but keeping the wallets of on-chain and LN activity strictly separated to minimize exposure to threats related to the alpha/beta state of LN software. But as it was discussed some pages ago this will probably only happen on a small scale.

Or Lightning Labs, Blockstream, or another VC-backed company that develops Lightning could hire a person specializing in business development.

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So it is possible that a LN "takeoff" is more likely to come from a new increase of transaction fees due to fuller blocks (condition 2). This would make it again attractive for service providers to jump on the LN boat.

I believe not. It also needs a better UX, needs more exchanges/services providing liquidity for easy routing, and needs their users to become Lightning users.