Loyce, maybe I am misunderstanding you, and maybe we are deviating from the topic of the thread a bit to be figuring out number of users and level of adoption and then maybe considering if that information is more obscured or less obscured by lightning network.  Seems to be more obscured, just like the quantity of coins held by an exchange, even if there might be points that claims are sent back to individuals on line with an exchange or channels are closed though lightning.

In any event, your acknowledgement of Coinbase potentially having 56 million users (as they seem to claim) and your earlier description of 37 million funded bitcoin addresses seem to contradict your point about the number of funded bitcoin addresses as being the "upper limit" in regards to the number of bitcoin users, because even Coinbase's claimed number of users (of 56 million) exceeds the number of funded addresses of 37 million.

Sure those coinbase users count, but we hardly know anything about them.  Coinbase knowns quite a bit about them.  With lightning, how much are we going to know about those users?  I don't claim to be technical enough, and sure some folks running nodes and compiling information probably have better ideas about the kind of users and number of users, but they are likely guessing, while at the same time the value that goes through the lightning network is going to have a lot of variance between users in terms of their whole bitcoin value (how many bitcoins they own as compared with how many they might be using to facilitate lightning network transactions).

We seem to have a lot of black holes in trying to figure out both number of bitcoin users and how many coins that they might own (even if held and gatekeepered by a custodian).

There are also various ways to attempt to figure out if some of the members are just dabbling in bitcoin, yet those dabblers have way more potentiality to put way more value into bitcoin, so surely there are no coiners and there are way the hell underfunded bitcoiners.  Probably, there are not too many Michael Saylors in the world, because he seems to be ok with putting a real high percentage of his wealth and the wealth of his company into bitcoin, but even his extremeness can be contagious and show that otherwise folks who we considered to be well funded in bitcoin having 10% to 30% of their wealth in bitcoin, might be ready, willing and able to invest way more into bitcoin, even if they already have a decently large stake in bitcoin.

I personally suggest that normies (and I do not see any reason that normies, rich peeps or institutions should be very different in this regard) invest between 1% to 10% of their investment value into bitcoin, but if they model after guys like Saylor they could become way more bullish about how much they put into bitcoin.   There are also likely a lot of people who do not have very much stored wealth in anything, but they start to dabble into bitcoin, and their ideas might change, which would include some of the increased adoption in El Salvador which also seems to have some increased uses of the lightning network that might cause some of the lower paid people and the less likely to adopt bitcoin people to start to dabble more and more in bitcoin and start to add value to the both the adoption quantity of persons and the percentage of their wealth in bitcoin may start to increase, too.

Of course, there are governments too, that are considering dabbling in bitcoin in terms of considering if they might want to hold some reserves in bitcoin, and that could become complicated if they start to act like Saylor rather than acting like a currently hesitant no-coiner considering dabbling up to 1% into bitcoin, and again the seemingly increased uses of the lightning network in El Salvador might get them thinking about bitcoin in one kind of way in terms of the utility of usage (including increasing economicalness of remittances), but then cause some of these governments to consider keeping more and more on its balance sheet in bitcoin, whether those are more prudent conservative levels such as 1% to 10% or they end up going full Saylor.. which gosh who knows?  50% or some seemingly ridiculous leveraged amount that seems to even be approaching more than 100%.

So, of course any assertion of 100x increase in adoption from here (such as the one that you made, Loyce) has a lot of vague aspects concerning "what do you mean by adoption exactly", but then also if we think about some of the increased use cases and then how consciouses can be changed in terms of using lightning network causes them to have more and more ideas about increasing their storage of value into bitcoin, then 100x from here seems likely conservative rather than overly zealous as a near to medium prediction.. and maybe super conservative if we are talking 10 years from now, but I still am not sure about how we go about measuring adoption level like we might measure whether a house has a microwave, fridge, dishwasher, fax machine, and/or washer/dryer.  

Even measuring internet connection seems easier than measuring binary ideas of adoption of bitcoin or not, but bitcoin is not binary in that category... In the case of the internet, there maybe materially less significant even if there might be redundant ways of person x to connect to the internet from his/her own home versus when out of the home, but bitcoin there are so many gradients in terms of level of adoption and how bitcoin is used can cause incidental adoption.  Accordingly, attaching value to an asset (bitcoin) seems to be a bit of a different kind of cat as compared to material items.. and digital value - a concept that peeps are still trying to grok.. (those paying attention).

Of course, it seems that mostly exchanges whether we are talking about Coinbase or otherwise have incentives to overstate their number of users.

I suppose that if we have different folks attempting to analyze the number of lightning network users, there are going to be some folks who have incentives to overstate that number and other folks with incentives to understate the number of users... .It seems increasingly difficult to really place solid numbers on that, and probably some of the reasons that status quo institutions including governments and status quo rich people (aka no coiners or under-invested precoiners) are feeling quite a bit of uneasinesses about the growth of bitcoin in these various more difficult to track arenas.


I don't know Loyce.  Probably, the question about your owning the $10 bill or how many $10 bills that you own or might own could matter depending on the issue that we are trying to figure out, and likely our conceptions about these kinds of matters will also change with the passage of time... especially bitcoin has some differing preservation of dynamic values that could incentive some people to want to know about bitcoin, even though they give few shits if you hold $10 or even $50k, and of course, if you happened to hold a few million dollars (or the equivalent in value), some people might start to care.. especially if you are able to move it around easily... or you could even use it in small increments without anyone really being able to detect that you have more of those rather than just the one you injected into the system to buy your slurpy after finding out they accept dollars.



Seems that I was making a bit of a different point about the non-binary nature of counting bitcoin value.  So, I think that they are quite different to count, even if you are able to create threshold levels on the bottom.. but it becomes a bit amorphous to be counting the same for those who own fractions of a bitcoin or satoshi and those who own 10s of thousands and then attempting to compare their abilities to own more or are they maxed out.  I don't consider those to be very easy questions, even if there are ways of attempting to make those kinds of counts and to measure and sure there can still be meaning, depending on what kinds of questions that you might be trying to answer...including active users versus hoarders.. if you can.. and gosh did not realize that Joe was sitting on a fortune.. and maybe joe did not realize it either.


You seem to be making part (if not all) of my point for me.  Thanks for that.   

 


Of course, it is not easy to stay on topic exactly because some of these various topics do overlap, and especially if we might be trying to consider how easy it might be to count users on the lightning network or if those users might end up transitioning in and out of bitcoin, but then with exchanges allowing for lightning channel movements, there could develop more questions regarding if some of these lightning-related matters or adoption matters are just passing fads, or maybe something BIGGER is going on, and it ends up starting through lightning rather than through more traditional bitcoin on chain on/off ramps.

If you have a bitcoin seed phrase, all you need to do is backup your seed, and your money is protected if you lose access to the device you are using to access your wallet (as long as you have access to your backup). With LN, in order to keep your money safe, you need both your seed and every signature you receive from your channel counterparty. Signatures received from channel counterparties are not especially sensitive, as there is nothing an adversary can do with them if they obtained non-exclusive access to them (there would be a result in a loss of privacy), so storing signatures received from channel counterparties could potentially be backed up via some kind of cloud storage, such as google drive.

With services such as BlueWallet, the number of users could (and probably does) exceed the number of open channels they have. Some of these users may have a "balance" on their BlueWallet account, and have zero coin on any settled bitcoin address.

This is getting off topic, and we can create a divergence split topic if you want....You mention the number of coinbase registered users. There was a time in which coinbase did not require any kind of KYC in order to create an account, and during some parts of that time, they also gave monetary incentives for people creating accounts. Most of the registered accounts on coinbase probably do not have any kind of balance, and probably have made very few trades, if any. A more meaningful metic would be "active" accounts that meet some kind of trading or balance threshold.

I'm surprised by the size of the LN transactions: on average 0.011BTC per transaction is a lot more than I expected. And I would have expected more withdrawals than deposits, since on-chain withdrawal fees are high, while (most) exchanges don't charge a deposit fee. I can imagine the lack of incoming capacity limits how much users can withdraw (for now).
It's promising though, it's more than I expected.

I can think of a few reasons:
Back when I was testing Eclair, I noticed the channel reserve went up and down with on-chain Bitcoin fees. So I closed my channels when on-chain fees were low.
Since then, I'm only using BlueWallet (custodial) and Phoenix Wallet (from the same creator as Eclair: ACINQ). Obviously BlueWallet doesn't make me worry about channels, and in Phoenix Wallet I have several empty channels by now. If I close them, I lose the incoming capacity, while there's nothing I get out of it. So I have no reason to ever close them. But as long as I don't receive new LN-funds on those channels, the other party (the ACINQ node) has all funds "stuck" and can't use them anymore. So at some point I assume they'll want to close the channel.

There is no "we" here.

Some people want to know these kinds of things for a variety of reasons including being able to figure out growth or whether they might be able to make money by investing in a related business and even attempting to compare the good of one system compared to another... Maybe even wanting to improve one system versus another - or destroy (even though destroy comes off as negative).



People will still attempt to make estimates to the extent that it is feasible to attempt.  For example, if I started a cookie selling business and I was trying to figure out if it was worth it for me to attempt to use LN, I might set something up, and then compare it to my other options and maybe I am able to do both, or maybe I have to choose one path or another for logistical or manpower reasons.  There might be ways that I measure from my business, or I might ask someone if they are able to tell me the information that I need so that I do not have to expend resources that might be limited for me.



Various people know different things, and they have a variety of theories about what they know, too, whether it is the exact number of dollar users or the number of people using bitcoin, lightning network, coinbase, or some shitcoin.  Some people have better information than others, and sometimes they are able to make decisions and/or choices based on what they know or what they believe that they know.


Sure, there is a difference between transferring funds, such as bitcoin, between users within an exchange, such as coinbase or some other centralized exchange and if they are transferring coins off of (or onto) the exchange.  Even fillippone's post showed differing ways to transfer in and out of exchanges that may or may not be very traceable on the individual level to figure out quantity of coins moving back and forth, absent some kind of voluntary disclosure from an insider who might even be fudging the numbers if there is no way for us to be able to verify those representations (to the extent that they matter to one person versus another).

While I appreciate the information, I am bitterly disappointed to report my up-to-date Eclair is reporting "failed to open channel: Incompatible features"  (which is pretty much what almost all non-onion addresses come up with when I try to add a channel/node.

I expect if I tried with Zap, I'm going to get the same "incompatibility" error.

Sadly no, I'm totally in the clear as it were.  I have a Tro browser, but just good ole Windoze for the Zap Wallet and the Eclair is on my phone and has in the past worked ok, just not now.  Both are on different internet plans with different provider, so I've been figuring that the issue was a connectivity one.

A couple of weeks ago I installed Eclair onto a brand new phone I'd bought with NFC features to try out some RF multi wallets connecting to a node that starts 03e9e5a2ae70e42 ... when I went to do a transaction a couple of days ago to send some funds off of the new Eclair wallet, the transaction was "in transit/in flight" for three days at which point the channel closed and $6.75 of TX fees were taken out (even though the TX's on mempool.space suggest a fee of ~5¢ to ~25¢ is adequate)...

Three devices all with issues.

Lightning Network: a second path towards centralisation of the Bitcoin economy

Have you read this paper? What's your opinion?

Since the meaning of "centralization" is vague, IMO topology of LN network isn't centralized (star/extended star topology), but unevenly distributed (partially connected mesh network).