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You're right, which is why it's worth trying to anticipate what those uses will be. In the meantime, though, there are still lots of kinks to be worked out and it's better they get worked out on us than on normies who will be discouraged by them.
What's the big pain-point that you think lightning alleviates for the typical person?
I think it may continue being primarily useful for relatively fringe purposes. The more of those applications, though, the more people there will be using it and organic growth can spread that way.
I completely agree with your points. A large part of the current development (Group 1) must be dedicated to optimizing and fixing these 'kinks' to prepare the infrastructure for mass adoption.
Regarding the big pain-point that Lightning alleviates for a typical person (not just enthusiasts), I focus on 'The Impossibility of Micro-Transactions.'
Currently, nearly all traditional (fiat) financial systems are economically unviable for transactions under $1 or even $5; either the fees are too high relative to the amount, or the administrative friction and delay destroy the value.
The core pain point Lightning solves is: The inability to conduct instant, low-friction micro-purchases.
But here’s the catch: For a typical user, starting the journey into Lightning (setting up a node, managing channels, having the technical knowledge to secure keys) is a far greater barrier than the current friction in banking systems.
The Solution: A non-KYC, temporary custodial service for amounts under $5 removes this initial barrier to entry. The user can send and receive small amounts instantly with a single click today. After doing that 20 times and realizing how fast and cheap it is, they will then have the incentive to learn key management for a $20 purchase and move to self-custody.
So, while you are right that the current use cases are fringe, I believe that removing the limit on 'impossible micro-transactions' is Lightning's biggest selling point for mass adoption, and temporary custody is the only way to "sell" that capability to the normie user first.
That’s a perfect articulation of the 'Build for the current users first' principle. You are absolutely right: developers are understandably focused on Group 1 because they are the ones providing the immediate, real-world testing and feedback loop for current capabilities.
The crucial question is where we believe the dominant use-case for the mass market will ultimately land. If the mass market's primary interaction with Lightning is via streaming payments, tipping content creators, or small in-app purchases (which our current anecdotal evidence suggests is highly likely), then building the tools for that behavior—even if it requires temporary, safe custodial layers—is the fastest path to adoption.
If we wait until the mass market arrives to build their tools, we will have missed the boat. Building for Group 1 gets us the technical foundation; building for the hypothetical mass market gets us the adoption. It's a balance, not an either/or.