Bitcoin is evolving towards a model similar to the Internet.
The backbone of the Internet is operated by large corporations that connect to each other. Actual people are leaves of the network, barely operating a LAN attached to their ISP.
Similarly, the biggest pipelines on Lightning will be businesses like ACINQ that will provide a lot of liquidity, can hire a workforce to maintain the service 24/7 but also expect a profit. The leaves of the network will be plebs, Uncle Jims and small businesses running private, nonrouting nodes that have one or two channels.
That doesn't need to be a bad plan per se. Internet is very decentralized and it is very hard to censorship. Even if one big actor like ACINQ gets bad, there are always going to be alternatives.
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Uncle Jims and small businesses running private, nonrouting nodes that have one or two channels.
As a small "uncle Jim" here I wrote a guide about that scenario. https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/bitcoin-private-banks-over-lightning
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