A large part of the pitch for Lightning was facilitating native payments on the internet for digital services, but the user experience of that goal has not really materialized in a slick and easy way.

Work has been done by LND, CLN and LDK to address this issue. Web Assembly (WASM) is a new language and binary format to facilitate more efficient and lightweight programs to run in the web browser. LND and LDK both have WASM binaries for their nodes, and CLN is planning on implementing key management tools to run in WASM that can connect to a Lightning node remotely, building on its Greenlight work.

Lightning as a protocol and network still has a long road ahead in terms of solving open problems and figuring out how to craft applications that are easy and intuitive for end users, but work is moving forward. It will undoubtedly get messier as different teams diverge and focus on solving different problems, and extending functionality in different directions, but progress is undoubtedly happening. We can only hope that things don't diverge to the point of fragmenting the network and software compatibility.