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.
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.
Why can't the LN succeed the same way ETH-based L2 networks (Arbitrum, Base, Optimism) succeeded? I guess that's because people consider Bitcoin as an investment than a currency. ETH is viewed among many as a "utility token", especially when it's needed for interacting with smart contracts (dApps). I don't know how BTC developers are going to pull it off, especially when many exchanges still haven't adopted the LN yet. Coinbase recently made a partnership with Lightspark to add support for the LN.
Maybe there's hope after all? If the LN gets perfected, it could become the main railway for day-to-day BTC transactions. The future is unpredictable, so anything's possible.
