I like to think my finger rests on the pulse of bitcoin, its culture, innovations, these things I can feel. My feeling in 2021 was that the LN turned a corner, and this was correct I think; now it feels like an absolute explosion rapidly approaches, datelined perhaps for later this year, maybe early next year. I've over the last 6 months left bitcoin layer 1. My Coldcard still protects keys down there for my main UTXO stack, and I auto-dispatch DCA coin for saving of course, but I really don't fuck with L1 much anymore.
My LN channels haven't closed in forever. I wonder if they ever will.
After operating and noding around LN for long enough, drivechiains, sidechains, and spacechains seem passé, like pre-covid shit. Talk of an op_vault soft-fork seems redundant now that we have miniscript, sovereign vetos, and a PSBTv2 coming sometime, which imo, few realize is the future of all smart contracting. Many of the DeFi things that crypto aspires to do can be done so much better with Lightning, but with a real service, a real product, or securities, not a fucking vaporware token pushed by a CEX and their dying business model.
L2 has given me a better appreciation for the slow, safe, methodical pace that L1 has chosen, staying the course, letting technology inflate around it, letting bitcoin's value get abstracted with smart software pattern design. Many of the proposed forks of the past seem questionable now—Taproot and SegWit I don't count amongst them. In the moment, people arguing about Ordinal Theory and angry about blocks getting filled with inscriptions are missing a much bigger picture. Talking about StratumV2 adoption amongst miners seems more worthwhile, developing an eagerness to run nodes like many of the Theorists have done seems like something bitcoiners not running nodes should copy, preferably Taproot, because its updates are critical and purpose-built for the LN to take its next giant steps.
All the passion of well-intentioned bitcoiners needs to move to L2 and the mining space. L1 really doesn't need anything. It's L2 where we begin disintegrating the discrete payment networks of Visa, ACH, PayPal, Western Union, etc, offering a superior technology and experience to CBDCs, and get a jumpstart on reputation-identity which is the next wave via 0auth, slashtags, DiDs, Holepunch, and endpoint functionalities. The world's currencies will try bifurcating in a mostly East/West arrangement, basically think of a default where they try to start the same game over again from 0. We won't let them, not successfully, because our network will be open, permisionless, instant, neutral, global, and enforce rules. Along its rails, wires, and waves will travel the hardest money known to mankind. We don't get there without a robust L1 adjacent though—the Lightning Network. Here's a post I wrote on the obliteration CBDC's face if you're interested: #134290
I'm a lightning maximalist. I'm a lightning man.
Anyway, some favorites from the LN:
-Running LN channels, nodes, and contracts remotely with ZeusLN
-Quickly swapping BTC in and out of L1/L2 with Robotsats without running a node
-Derivative trading with LNmarkets
-ThunderSats lol
-LnURL for stupid easy LN addresses
-BTCPayserver
-Stacker News
-Nostr
Do any of you feel the same way? We finna explode? Wen? What are your favorite LN applications?