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But in practice won’t there always be nodes opening and closing channels?

I don't know. It depends. It is true for now, but I am not sure it will be true in the future. For example, there are proposals like CoinPool. In general, there are proposals to put more people into a channel. Also, there are some ideas flying around, how to solve the problem with on-chain interaction. You know what does it mean? It means Bitcoin could end up in a scenario, where there would be no need to open or close channels, because it will be resolved by more deep layers. So, it could be possible to have some opened LN channel, and then create some coins on L3, without touching L1, everything inside L2. Then, it could be possible to extend "a coin in a coin" or "a layer based on a layer" to that extent, that it could require no interaction with on-chain coins.

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And in theory by the time the block rewards run out, technology would be way more advanced than now.

More advanced does not mean "better". Also, the current consensus has its limitations, and the whole chain will stop, unless there will be some hard fork. But as far as I know the Bitcoin community, they will use hard forks only if they will be forced to do so. And by "forced" I really mean "forced". Maybe 2038 year problem will be resolved by increasing timestamps in a soft-fork way? Maybe when the chain will stop, the last block will be endlessly replaced? Maybe people would start making the blockchain smaller, by completing "D" in the "CRUD" model, so that "Delete" operation will be executed by overwriting the chain, and adding the hash of the previous chain in the first block after the Genesis Block? Why not? We could start mining on top of the Genesis Block, and produce 2016 blocks so strong, that they will be stronger than ever (so that will trigger the biggest chain reorganization ever), and then we can pretend that the Genesis Block is not from 2009, but from "2009+offset"? And what then? Because there are a lot of ways, how soft-forks or no-forks can save the day, and be used to avoid hard-forks always and forever.

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Could there be a possibility then that people come to a consensus to increase the troughput of the mainchain to use it more?

I can see a different trend. People think that no block size increase is needed, so also no increase in the use of the mainchain is needed. I think it could be reduced, because a lot of soft-forks and no-forks can be used to make things happen, no matter what developers want, and without their permission.

Quote from: satoshi on December 10, 2010, 05:29:28 PM

The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

I think that will be true in the future. Exactly that last sentence about "getting tyrannical". And I mean "really tyrannical", so not increasing the max block size is one thing, but I can also imagine making the whole chain smaller than it currently is, so for example going from the current ~450 GB to ~1 GB in the future. All that is needed is reaching consensus, and creating some Proof of Work that would overwrite the chain. I think it is possible, if miners could be rewarded directly in the Lightning Network. Another thing is that doing it once is more than enough. Some soft-fork or no-fork could make it permanent, and alter all rules.

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I mean if the security depends on miners, why would people ignore the problem by the time it comes to this.

There are many reasons, feel free to pick anything, or even extend that list:
1) they don't have good and working solutions for some problems
2) they don't care, they hope that things will be fixed automatically, when we will get there
3) they don't want to implement it now, when something is too crazy to reach consensus right here and right now

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Also i can imagine scenarios in the future where it could be beneficial(maybe for legal reasons like when someone is buying a house) to have big transactions on a public ledger, instead of lightning, regardless of cost, and then the rational approach would be to choose the most secure chain for this. But I’d like feedback on this.

I don't care about "legal reasons", because in many countries, the law is outdated, and it cannot catch the crypto world correctly. For example, imagine that Satoshi invented the simplest tax system that is possible: transaction fee. If you govern a country and use crypto, you can keep being just some user, even if you are a government, and it will work fine, it will just be a different scale. If you want to mint new coins, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, and create CBDC for your local currency, when you could just use existing crypto, right? Also, you don't have to force your citizens to fill some papers, to go through the whole system of "spaghetti law", you can just collect transaction fees, and not require any additional fees than that. If you want, you can require an explicit payment, you can show each user the explicit amount they have to pay, and you can make things very simple. So why governments don't want to go that way? I have no idea, maybe they are missing the bigger picture of what is possible, and the whole reason that such ideas can also be beneficial for them.

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they would loose a lot if they didn’t find a way to support mining

It is already solved by Merged Mining invented by Satoshi. Another way is Merged Signing for Proof of Stake. I think, technically it is not a problem at all, it is just a matter of making things happen. So it requires some coding skills, some time, and patience, to get there. And I hope we will.

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I fixed your quotes to reference that you were responding to different members within your above post.

Some users told me that, and I agree, that quoting should not point to users. And I am not the only member of "quotes without nicknames" club. It makes life easier, when it comes to writing posts, but it is only opinion (and there are exceptions, like quoting posts that are far away, for example written by Satoshi). So, I prefer "userless quotes", but feel free to "fix" them if you want.

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Do you believe that we might see such set of dynamics coming in advance or should we worry that whatever is happening in bitcoin needs to be fixed right now in order to stop such an inevitability? would there not be any way to stop it once we see it, or is it already too late? Perhaps, we need to discontinue all work on lightning network in order to discourage second layer gravitation of value towards?

It depends on what do you want. Because if you want Proof of Work, then you should use that in lower layers. But if you want Proof of Stake, then it can simply take over, if no Proof of Work will be added to some lower layers. Then, if Proof of Stake is superior, coins will gravitate towards staking. But if Proof of Work is so good, then why it is not present in the lower layers? Why Lightning Network transactions are not Merge Mined with Proof of Work, but only signed?

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But maybe it addresses the potential problem that you had outlined, so then your assertion that no solution exists has been resolved, with a possible solution? perhaps?

Maybe. But still, it has to be confirmed or rejected by other people. It is always a matter of consensus, for either Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, or Proof of Whatever. So, ideas are flying, but they are only ideas, unless implemented and enforced. And there is still a lot of work to reach that.

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To your knowledge is there anyone working on a BIP in regards to your proposed solution or does a BIP already exist?

As far as I know, no BIP yet, but I think some people are generally interested in the concept of Merged Mining. For example, I guess this guy wants to do that in a Proof of Work way: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-June/020532.html

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I think this is also important, the people that will need to solve this arent alive yet.

I think the basic idea of creating a separate chain with zero supply, that could accept deposits and withdrawals from other chain, is mature enough to be implemented. It can be implemented in a very general and open way, then it can be later limited by soft-forks in the future. Another thing is that if this additional chain has no coins, then it can be easily created (by making signatures), and easily destroyed (by moving coins on mainnet), so recreating the whole additional chain will be quite easy, just all users will move from the additional chain v1 into the additional chain v2 by making a single on-chain transaction.