This is true. And I find it intriguing.

I guess it's because it's the type of thing that'll gradually sneak up in increments rather than landing in your lap with a bang. If developers were savvy, and shallow, enough enough of them would collectively agree to have a 'launch'.

I've had a couple of fiddles and couldn't get anywhere with failed routings. It may need a SPV type of upgrade/downgrade to draw more people. I don't know what the current status is.

Ah, the classic altcoin-pumping method!

It's been coming in dribs and drabs. I think it's too early to expect much -- we're definitely not there yet in terms of usability for average users. The bear market has also sort of crushed all excitement about anything.

Is that necessarily a good thing though? I mean It's nice to see that and all but we have to not forget that the developers themselves asked to not use LN in mainnet yet. If something wrong happens and people lose their money, they will start shouting that LN is broken while It's only their fault.

True, but there's no way to stop them. They're pioneers and we should appreciate their willingness to gamble. The people using LN now are much like the people using Bitcoin in its early days. The software was buggy and unreliable, and the whole design was experimental.

The old adage always applies: "Don't put in more than you can afford to lose!"

i saw a pretty cool demo posted on reddit earlier today: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/a8g1o0/daniel_alexiuc_buying_beers_with_lightning/

the wallet (wallet of satoshi) hasn't been released yet but the UI looks awesome. as we can see, LN is significantly faster than chip credit card payments so there's so much potential for brick-and-mortar commerce.

The fundamental problem i see is the security issues as it does not use the blockchain for the transactions inside the node and i would not use it for larger transactions and most of the people will not risk it either, a simple screw up when it comes to money wont be tolerated by the masses and it will have an impact in the future development and adaptability, yet i am waiting for complete development and the most interesting part is the atomic swaps which i am looking forward to try in the future.

I don't think the developers themselves would encourage the masses to try it as it is. Even if there was something like that perhaps it would be prudent to hold it back until things were stable and ironed out.

I played with the Eclair testnet wallet last year or whatever. I'm pretty sure that did QR codes. It worked fine in the end but it took a fair bit of fiddling.  

There's going to need to be a lot of adjustments before it moves from curio to mainstay. Early Bitcoin developers had the luxury of obscurity.

Agreed. But until we are at stage that they do, we are unlikely to see the general excitement or buzz that pooya87 is talking about. The average bitcoin user probably doesn't know much about Lightning Network, and the average forum user is here for altcoin bounties and not much else. The level of ignorance surrounding segwit is still very high - it will be a long time before knowledge and discussion about LN is commonplace.



Thanks for that - I'll check them out after the festive season.

The video is impressive, but as he says, the wallet is not released yet. It also gives no indication about how easy and quick or complicated and time consuming it was to initially configure and connect to a node.

Generally speaking, I don't see much interest for LN (I mean, outside here) and not many talks too. Maybe a lot are not aware or think it's something that will be released in 5 years ....

The stats could look nice but since it's something new without back records... People are probably testing the water, but they could be less interested after too. Saying a lot of shops are using LN is something subjective.

wow that's good news and rarely discussed, bitcoin has experienced a lot of development and for the next few years I'm sure bitcoin will become a very popular digital currency and used by many people