When I joined the forum in 2023, Lightning Network was the most discussed topic at that time. Most members, especially NotATether, would share opinion like it was as if LN were a solution to fast payments. I saw the excitement, but not until years passed by did the energy go down. Honestly, I dont see a future for LN anytime soon.

Out of 100%, become holders aproximately 65% are long-term holders, excluding traders. Correct me if im wrong. However, what Im trying to say is that people see Bitcoin as a valuable asset. It will be difficult to see people use Bitcoin for everyday transactions, covering fees, so long as volatility still exists.

Bitcoin on-chain transactions are simpler than Lightning Network transactions because when it comes to on-chain, you simply paste an address, choose an amount and transaction fee and click on send. In case of Lightning Network, there are channels, inbound liquidity and so on. It's good to use once you set up the wallet.

The biggest problem is user experience. Apple Pay, Google Pay and similar payment services have invested millions, if not billions of dollars into creating the best user experience. Lightning Network competes against these payment services. I can pay extremely easily with Apple Pay but is the same possible with LN?

I think the probability is high that Lightning won't be the general purpose instant payment tool it was described in the euphoria phase in 2017/18 when it launched.

The current stagnation could be explained by the low fees, but I don't think that is the reason, because it struggled to grow also in 2023 and 2024 when fees were high during the Ordinals craze. According to BitcoinVisuals, Lightning channels nodes stats were even declining during that phase. It is possible that it was simply too expensive most of the time to "just try it out", and in addition some may have simply sold their LN balance when the price started to grow.

For now I have more hopes about Ark and sidechains that they could solve the scaling problem more efficiently.

But Lightning has also some advantages both compared to Ark (it is independent of a "provider", even if Ark providers are trustless) and sidechains (where you have additional risk due to an alternative consensus system). I think it has a future as a "prepaid card" type bundling option. For example, if you get your salary with Bitcoin, you could transfer a part of it each month to LN, and then use it for payments and so you only have to use the fee once. It is also useful to transfer BTC from exchange to exchange, but that is more a feature for heavy traders.

Of course all that depends on Bitcoin becoming more popular for payments again. The current relatively high number of transactions in the last months may be hinting at that (it seems to be not all Runes and similar stuff), but it needs to be confirmed.

Ideally we should have a wallet that could integrate every Bitcoin L2 solution:

- on-chain payment: for large transactions like getting your salary, or international txes.
- Lightning: as a prepaid card for small purchases.
- Ark: for people who only hold relatively small amounts but transact often, better alternative to CEX holding.
- Sidechains rollups tBTC-style decentralized bridges: similar to Ark; but also useful for people who need advanced DeFi capabilities as they often integrate EVM or similar advanced scripting smart contracting.

If this setup was used by most Bitcoiners then we could easily have 10-20 times more transaction capacity, and that should be enough for the next 10 years.

The truth is that the fact LN has not been more successful to date is something that I have not understood for a long time. In the past, it was said that using this solution was complicated, I imagine that it referred to the issue of creating invoices, and that this was a significant barrier for the average user, but for years we have had easy-to-use solutions, multiple Apps such as Muun, WoS, etc. that are really intuitive to use. So on that side, I don't think UX is a big real problem.

As for the risks of centralisation, it is as simple as depositing in them the minimum necessary for small payments, amounts that even if lost would not be a big problem, which would be a similar approach as with CEX but without the KYC. And CEX are very successful, so I don't think that's the problem either.

Could it be that in reality if these solutions have not become mainstream it will be due to a lack of knowledge and to the prejudices, due in turn to the lack of sufficient publicity?

But channels and nodes should be a good way to measure the actual user base. Of course, it is always possible that the decline has other reasons, maybe some people who speculated that LN could become an interesting source of income could have closed their channels while "true end users" are actually increasing. But this is also speculative, and I think we can deduct from stagnating/declining node stats that at least it hasn't been exploding.

This would only make sense regarding interoperability, i.e. you could pay more services via Lightning than potentially with something like Coinbase Pay. But regarding decentralization and trustlessness it would not really make a difference if you hold your coins on a custodial wallet and then pay with LN.

Does the Lightning Network still hold a future? In my opinion Lightning Network is still hold in the future I dont remember but I do believe somewhere on this forum and YouTube there is a merchant who accepts Bitcoin and use Lightning Network, because in my opinion this is the fastest way to do use Bitcoin for daily transactions.

Binance, OKX, and bitfinex seems agree because they already accept Lightning Network deposits and I hope there will be another L2 that succeeds like Layer 2 on ETH, if we take a look at the ETH, Arbitrum Optimism can bring Billion of dollar into their chain and I hope bitcoin can do that

This illustrates the disconnect on this subject.

If you ask the question, "will LN have a future within the Bitcoin community" the answer can potentially be "yes" (although that's a debate on its own).

If you ask the question, "will LN have a future in the world of mainstream payment methods", the answer is absolutely "no".

When you compare LN to the Bitcoin chain, it can sometimes be compared favorably (although people have argued that point).

When you compare LN to any of the systems running the world's everyday mainstream payments, it looks... ridiculous.

LN's UX has improved recently. Especially with lightning addresses. It makes sending BTC or satoshis as simple as sending an email. Easy to read, easy to remember. Still, this is not enough. Because you need to know how to open or close a channel, select a routing node, etc.

There are many technical aspects that are somewhat-difficult to learn. It's why many people continue to use on-chain BTC. Hopefully, the L2 scaling solution continues to be funded by the community to help improve UX over the long term. Just my two sats.

• https://btcmap.org/apps

The site makes it easy for us to find any store/hotel that accepts Bitcoin LN readings... and most surprised in Indonesia there are still some stores that accept bitcoin payments, I do not know when this was last updated, after just seeing the data is still there until now.

Several global exchanges have accepted bitcoin LN, it's just that our local exchanges still have not accepted it that's the least I know, what I personally know LN is still much less interested.