Hi guys,
I have spent a while reading about BIPs 340-342, but I'm struggling to find a definitive answer about how these BIPs will address scaling issues.
To give some context:
I am concerned with the future user scaling of Bitcoin. When there are 5 billion users, no individuals will be able to afford to transact on-chain - 5 billion people => 1 transaction per person per ~20 years - unless there is some highly scalable way of aggregating transactions.
Lightning does not address this problem. Lightning improves transaction speed and volume, but it does not solve the root problem of redeeming one's coins on-chain. There are proposed solutions such as channel factories, but these are still worthless without the possibility to redeem on-chain.
If no one can afford to redeem on-chain, we may as well just create a separate token called LNBTC and operate LN independent of Bitcoin.
I have to disagree with you on this point.
With LN, it is possible to redeem your coin from LN and claim your coin on-chain. The LN protocol makes it unnecessary for users to do this on a regular basis, and as such they will not redeem their coin via an on-chain transaction on a regular basis.
If an individual wants to redeem the coin they have on LN, they can do so. This does not mean that every individual needs to be able to transfer between LN and on-chain every day.
In terms of scalability, I don't think it is possible to increase the number of transactions in a block by one without increasing the total block size by some constant. In other words, the total time incremented block size will be at best O(1) in relation to the number of users who have at least one on-chain transaction during that time increment.