Taxes are a big headache especially for merchants trying to adopt Bitcoin. It's one thing to install an app to charge customers. It's another thing to register the earned Bitcoin in your cash register and later in your accounting program.

Not sure I understand but relieving merchants of bitcoin accounting would definitely help.

On public channels, routing fees and max/min htlc sizes can be used to steer payments in one or the other direction. This is very helpful.

Private channels on the other hand don't need that and can just have a static fee, maybe based on usage patterns.

The LSPSpec and it's features is on our roadmap. This will improve the Lightning experience enormously. https://github.com/BitcoinAndLightningLayerSpecs/lsp

As soon as we see LSPSpec adoption, I strongly expect the wallet app / liquidity provider roles to separate. We at Synonym do not offer liquidity services to US users due to legal constraints. It is our intended purpose to work towards a world where a wallet and LSP can be a separate entity so a third party LSP can provide liquidity to Bitkits US users.

You might enjoy my recent LSPSpec talk

LSP is a Lightning Service Provider. Our current focus lies on providing techniques and the liquidity to create a great wallet/node experience. You can get a channel from our widget for example.

On the other hand, Synonym is developing the Bitkit wallet and focuses on innovative peer2peer tech (Slashtags) to further decentralize the web. We focus heavily on open source software.

We first need to increase the demand for LN payments before any huge capital will flow in. Capital follows demand. The best way to do that is to keep improving the LN experience and keep onboarding users.

We already have Bitfinex, Kraken, and other big companies with LN nodes. They are there and ready to supply when needed.

The only LSP fee rate website I can think of is Amboss Magma and the LnRouter LiqAds marketplace. I don't think there is a website with all the rates.

You can purchase a Blocktank LSP channel from our website on https://blocktank.to/#widget.

Even with the LSPSpec, there are still mechanisms needed to help users select the right LSP because they differ in their feature set, reliability, and more. I can see a future where LN Explorers aggregate price/feature/reliability data and suggest LSPs to connect to. Some smart entrepreneur will come up with a business model for that I am sure.

Let's do it!

Indeed!