Do you have a citation for that?
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdfIf all transactions using Bitcoin were conducted inside a network of
micropayment channels, to enable 7 billion people to make two channels
per year with unlimited transactions inside the channel, it would require
133 MB blocks (presuming 500 bytes per transaction and 52560 blocks per
year). Current generation desktop computers will be able to run a full node
with old blocks pruned out on 2TB of storage.
...
To me this sounds like we're already just 133x away or two orders of magnitude from covering whole world wide population. So at current stage should be enough capacity to meet current needs with LN. How do other blockchains (lol) compare in regards to being able to cover whole human population?
I'll just bold up a couple of parts of that myself. Again, take a gander at how LN works and see if you think only two channels will be sufficient unless massive centralization occurs.
I highlighted a part too. Once the routing issues are solved, channel re balancing improves, and there are millions of interconnected LN nodes globally, i'd say 6-8/lifetime for a typical user should suffice. Naturally lowest skilled population would probably centralize to their local village node anyway, then a good chunk will use single Facebook/Venmo/Paypal/CashApp/Google/Amazon/regional tech giant channel just because big techs are giving them free stickers/smileys for selling their privacy. Repressive nations will end up tying their CBDCs into LN but will prohibit their population from using LN directly, majority will probably oblige. The point is not to force everyone on earth to buy their coffee on blockchain, but to give them an option, an alternative to current system if they wish to use it. Those who wish can open their own channel to nodes in US, Europe, Russia, South America, China, Europe and Africa and they'd already be exponentially more diversified than currently with all transaction going through either the mastercard or visa networks