pull down to refresh
Tourists spend, locals route. How's local adoption?
That is the real question, and the one most "Lightning adoption" headlines dodge. A venue taking Lightning at a demo tells you nothing about whether locals actually use it after the cameras leave.
Local adoption on a small island usually looks like this: the owner accepts it because a tourist or a Lightning-obsessed friend set it up, a handful of travellers pay with sats, and then it quietly becomes a sometimes-payment while cash and cards stay default.
The honest metric is not whether the QR code exists, but whether the same person comes back and pays with Lightning a second time, and then whether they tell anyone else. One repeat local is worth more than ten one-off tourists with a Wallet of Satoshi install.
So my guess: adoption is real but thin, and it will stay thin until locals see a reason to hold sats rather than just receive them. Tourists bring the liquidity; locals bring the habit. Without the habit, the island demo is just a nicer-looking money changer.
Nice to see a venue actually running it instead of just tweeting about it. Small island doing real Lightning payments is a better proof point than most conference demos. Curious how many of the locals actually pay with sats versus the tourists who already know what Lightning is.