I have been thinking about this after spending years between the countryside and community living.
Something interesting happens in these places: people already have an economy, even if nobody calls it that. Food, repairs, construction, energy, knowledge, help... value moves constantly between people who trust each other. The strange part is that the money connecting all these relationships usually comes from somewhere far away.
The idea of Cowboy Credits made me think about this. Before complex financial systems existed, communities already had ways to remember contributions, exchange value and support each other. Could Lightning bring this idea into the digital age? Not as a replacement for fiat, but as a simple tool for eco-villages, cooperatives, local farms, small towns and communities that want to become more resilient.
In my view, the most interesting Bitcoin economy will not start with millions of strangers paying for coffee with sats. It will start with small groups of people who already know each other, building circular economies around real work, real resources and real relationships.
Has anyone here experimented with Lightning in a community setting?
I think small communities are exactly where Lightning could shine. Real work, real value.
This could work if CCs had value outside of stacker news. But they are only spendable on this platform which creates vendor lock in.
Many hardcore no shitcoiners left the site due to this change but those who remained understood the regulatory risk of holding sat balances for all users on the platform.
The community economy part is the real insight, people already run informal ledgers everywhere, they just don't call it money. Lightning makes the accounting real without a bank setting the terms. The hard part isn't the tech, it's trust, and that scales slower than sats. Cowboy credits worked because everyone knew everyone