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lightning

The first lightning try-outs and development efforts began in early 2015.

The first testnet efforts, the first eclair wallet and the real life lightning payments went in test phase around that same time. 

The public real live network use started in 2017.

On December 28, 2017 a user (Alex Bosworth) made a payment online with lightning. Other sources claim that the first lightning payment happened in Berlin, in the famous Room 77. 

Whatever the real first LN payment was and where it exactly too place,  is not relevant for what I want to say. Fact is that lighting is almost 9 years old now (counting from dev tests to today). And still the market hasn't decided yet what the go-to wallet should be. That alone, is rather telling.In any market (browsers, gaming consoles, phones, fast-food restaurants,…) you get a market leader after a few years. 

You would have expected a clear top dog by now. A company or project who’s excellence jumps out from user perspective and usability, stability and technical compatibility.

We're actually far from that moment. 

Wallet of f’ing

There’s a token “winner” however. That’s “Wallet of Satoshi”, which we all know is an accident waiting to happen. It’s not really a LN wallet, but a service absorbing liquidity while faking a wallet on a front-end. It works though… for now.

The other wallets are all having issues. They’re either close to unusable by an average user, slow, incompatible, buggy, unstable, custodial garbage and if they work fine, they usually ask a high fee (defeating the purpose of using LN in the first place) or have other drawbacks (like having the most rotten interface ever).

One example of the state of the lighting network is the recent encounter with the fine technical wallet called “Mutiny wallet”, which I foolishly tried to use as a vehicle for “onboarding” a new user. What a mistake to make.

The on-screen messages are a disaster, the opening of a channel is not announced properly, the fee is not calculated (from user perspective) and the handling of the wallet is absolute s*** for non-tech users. (As bitcoiners WE know that a channel needs to be funded and opened, and that will take some time). The user doesn’t know this, and has no clue. There’s not even a message indicating that this is a one-time-only event! (crucial for onboarding!).This is just one example from a wallet I actually like myself. That’s why I tried it.I also attempted to onboard people with about every wallet under the sun (including eclair !) and it ALWAYS fails (except for Blink and Wallet of Satoshi).

Layer No thanks

The main issue is not that we don’t have good devs or the designers suck (although some of them … ) … no, much has to do with how difficult and complex lighting itself actually is to maintain in the background.

Talk to anyone who’s maintaining a LN node for longer than a few months and you’ll notice a rather deep rabbit hole they’ve found themselves in after a while. On top of this complexity they are hardly getting a break even on lighting fees.

The challenges are many : no earnings model, routing problems, close to no redundancy is possible (you can’t put two identical nodes online and have one play backup for the other that would be breaking the setup), liquidity balancing, baby sitting channels, watchtowers, forced closes of channels, scummy nodes and taking the hit when something goes wrong on the still in development network… 

The flip side is a growing demand for LN payments (anyone wants to instantly pay with bitcoin at close to free transaction cost).

The main challenge remains onboarding users in my opinion. After 9 years, we should have something better then 20 wallets and only one fake one that “works”. If you talk to a new user, who’s even willing to listen to “a bitcoiner doing his thing” you don’t have much time to get them onboared. The elevator pitch is usually about 30 seconds to 1 minute. (not 10 minutes, dear Aqua wallet:) When you have one shot at a user installing an app on their phone, you don’t have much choice.

You go for Wallet of f’ing Satoshi. Because you know the only way that this lightning network can show it’s magic, is when a dodgy company with rarely seen devs, does their front-end magic trick and pays your lighting channel, fees, liquidity and such up front with an easy to understand interface.

It completely, and utterly defeats the purpose. And it sucks.

AND… We all know it!!!

And yet, we’re still loving the idea of the layer 2 solution so much, that we give that option to users, and save the custodial vs. non-custodial talk for later. (if there is a “later”)

The other options are Blink and Muun wallet of course (with the latter showing very good progress).

On-chain wins

In the end, the layer 2 on bitcoin becomes more and more of a problem in my opinion.

The liquid sidechain is another topic I’m not going to tackle here, but met me say it’s not an alternative to LN yet, far from it. 

The people running their own lightning node, are a rare breed: willing to invest money and time into running a node for this purpose. That’s awesome. But still, after 9 years of lightning I conclude that this project is in the process of failing, compared to on-chain transactions (which aren’t affordable in the long run, I know).

The bottom line is that it’s far to difficult to run such a node and maintaining it, while it’s even more difficult to let non-tech users try a “real” LN wallet in a non-custodial capacity.Even when I’m using another node + service to get my lightning payments in on a lightning address,… even then I get confronted with time-outs, failed transactions or users that don’t even bother anymore. (I understand)

I’ll even dare to say that it’s impossible to onboard people with the current set of lighting tools without help. 

Don’t bother

Every , and I mean e-ve-ry person I’ve ever onboarded into a non-custodial lightning wallet needed more person-to-person help afterwards, as the online help was impossible to find, wrong, outdated or clickbait for shitcoins. These users might be labeled as “stupid” or “dumb” by many in the community, but that’s exactly what your problem is: alienating the once that DO listen. If someone listens, installs an app, and can’t use it on their own, they you didn’t onboard anyone. You just wasted their time and they’ll uninstall the app and move on. This not theory: this is practice.Your hobby-grade apps fail and you shoot your own layer two in the foot by doing so.

The user interface is another impossible problem on many of these apps by the way : putting ‘sats’ first (like 90% of the wallets do) is nice from a bitcoiner perspective of course, but an average user wants to see the payment option in dollars or euros by default (less clicks). Once a user needs to click on “setting” (if they find the option at all:) , the game is usually over.

The lightning wallets are absolute trash when it comes to UX and design as well… most of them are so bad, I even didn’t manage to let people make a LN transaction with MY OWN wallet that was preloaded with some sats.  I give them MY phone and make them use it, and even that fails :) it’s miserable.‘How do I pay’‘How do I scan’‘Where is the euro amount?’’oops I clicked something’’screen goes blank’‘What’s the red error for “routing” about?”And don’t get me started on compatibility. One out of 4 lightning payments fail on my part. : routing issues, pending, not enough liquidity (while there is) and the occasional forced closing of a channel. The devs and admins mostly acting like their system and lighting itself is a beacon of light (pun intended) while on the other hand labeling any user who runs into problems as dumb, is also a big problem. 

One of my first tests on lightning was the eclair wallet in 2018. ( https://medium.com/@kim0raku/cash-in-hand-but-no-sale-179c730ff9d7 ) . And I find it sad to say, but we didn’t come a long way since.

Maybe another Layer 2 solution needs to come along and sweep this whole lighting channel stuff away. I’m actually looking forward to that moment. 

And I might be willing to run a node for such a system when it comes along.

As for now, I try to use on-chain transactions as much as I can; and stick to Muun wallet out of necessity if it’s opportune, although their backup code system is also an issue I don’t really like. 

But hey, beggars can’t be choosers. 

@deadeyes  

https://allesvoorbitcoin.be 

on chain: bc1qc5nlkn3xw9prr55wrlkfejq4y3r2vz696vxdpj

The state of Lightning after 9 years

@avbpod's bio

We're still far behind. But it's slowly improving with local meetups and our podcast of course: https://allesvoorbitcoin.be 

Host of the AVBpodcast (alles voor bitcoin podcast), a Belgian/Dutch podcast purely on bitcoin. We interview bitcoiners since early 2022 and the host is a long-time bitcoiner sharing his insights.
https://allesvoorbitcoin.be 

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