Does running Lightning Network actually feel worth the added complexity for everyday small transactions, or does on-chain still win for most practical use?
Lightning gets pitched as solving the small-transaction problem - near-instant, low fees, actually usable for buying coffee. But channel management, liquidity balancing, and occasional routing failures seem like real friction that doesn't get talked about as much as the speed/fee benefits
Wondering how this actually plays out for people using it regularly. Does the complexity fade once you're used to it, or is it a permanent tax on convenience that only makes sense if you're doing enough small transactions to justify learning the quirks? Curious if there's a genuine everyday-usable threshold or if it stays more niche/enthusiast territory in practice.
I think for everyday use Phoenix Wallet does an amazing job. I use it all the time and never have to think about it.
Our node is more experimental. I don't connect it to anything really, out of an abundance of paranoia.
Bitcoin without LN it will slowly became only a token. History will repeat again like with gold...
The way forward is to make LN works better.
People MUST start learning today.
The amount of dumb and lazy people I see today is astonishing... and this meme say it all
It all makes sense, but where would you start to make lightning better?
Some time ago I started looking at constructive criticism on the LN but people are still looking at who makes the claims instead of looking at the claims themselves.
However, I remember you had a list of possible improvements:
...
What else was there?
There are many things to be improved on LN, but people should have more patience with this stuff. You cannot add or change things on a global payment network just like that from one day to another. These things needs to be tested intensively. And most of these changes depends also of changes applied to onchain code (eg PTLC).
IMHO most of "issues" that people see today on LN are in fact their lack of knowledge of how to use LN. I see many node runners that don't know how to manage properly their liquidity, even for private nodes. No matter how much Rene Pickhardt and others are doing intensive research on this matter, people are not paying attention.
I, myself, trying to keep up with all that documentation, almost every day learn something new. There's so much to learn about LN. But yet many people are just complaining and worse... they jump on using Spark.
For me is clear: onchain is for long term holding and LN is THE payment network.
I typically find my lightning transactions to be smoother than fiat.
That’s mostly with online commerce, though.
https://i.postimg.cc/rmcJ77yF/BTC-because-fuck-banks.jpg