About LN, very interesting posts there, especially
the long one by hisslyness (many thanks to him). I also remember Bob's struggle with LN some years back.
I don't know... I've never set up a LN node or anything, so I can't have an informed opinion, but the feeling I get by reading about it, is that it looks cool, simple, fast, cheap on the outside, but is quite complicated and messy on the inside. Also, the constant need for pampering the node, in order for it to function properly, is not good. These are not good signs, and I fear that they may cause problems for its future/success. I hope I'm totally wrong on this.
The whole thing brings back memories of
Mike Hearn's blog post where he declares he's abandoning the Bitcoin project, and even jbreher's transaction limit posts here in WO... Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in favor of 2nd-layer solutions for micro-transactions and believe this is the future, but I sense that something may not be quite right (yet) in the current state of affairs in this matter. Just thinking out loud...
Yes, LN has been undergoing ever-increasing rounds of complexity as it seeks to provide what Bitcoin does on-chain off-chain. There are all sorts of caveats, gotchas and pitfalls and the need to settle on-chain introduces some interesting limitations as discussed by Peter Rizun and the scope creep has been quite large also (LN was originally envisioned for micro-transactions). Unfortunately, the censorship initiated by Theymos also removed a lot of the warning voices regarding potential issues with LN from the community and a largely sanitized presentation has prevailed. Hisslyness's post of his experiences is not too unexpected really.
I'm not going to make the obvious argument here because it's not helpful in context. It would be nice if LN could succeed but it seems to be very much an example of second system syndrome.