You could probe for unannounced channels and publish their funding transactions and channel point. That would be a "value add" in terms of estimating true usage of the network.

Verifiable data points like node count, public channel count, and public capacity.

Anything else used to "build a better model" is not verifiable, so it arguably makes the model worse.

nullcount

So what metrics would you use to determine if and how Lightning Network is being adopted and is successful?

andyleroy

bitcoin

LNBIG routed 12.4 BTC yesterday... how does that extrapolate to network volume?

Estimates and calculations of network activity are (at best) an exercise in mental masturbation or (at worse) attempted surveillance methods. There's no way to verify how accurate these estimates are. Even if every node on the network went fully "transparent" there's no way to prove their disclosures are accurate. What you're doing is not science, it's reading tea leaves.