When I first heard about lightning it was almost 10 years ago. I thought it was going to be amazing. However it never really caught on and I am surprised.

I think that most people just stopped using bitcoin for micro payments and which Switched to stablecoins on l2 networks like ETH, ARB, Polygon, etc.

ETH fees are high now but they weren’t when USDT launched on it many years back. I think many people utilized it. Then they switched to maybe Tron or Solana for near free transactions.

Hence why lightning never became larger.