this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Are you paid to post that nonsense?
For those in blissful ignorance: This uses so-called channels between participants. Opening a lightning channel means, basically, putting bitcoin in "escrow" on the blockchain. This requires multiple transactions on the blockchain. Bitcoin doesn't even have enough capacity to open a channel for each baby being born.
The amount that both sides put in "escrow" is the max payment imbalance that a channel can accept. Say, you want to use a channel to buy a car for $20k, then you need a channel that both you and the other guy have put in $20k in bitcoin.
If some calamity happens, these funds are lost in nirvana.
While Lightning doesn't need you to open a channel for every new recipient and has smart routing through other participants, I still think it's an inconvenient solution we don't have to take.
We have Solana, a 300.000+ TPS Layer-1. We have much smarter Ethereum Layer-2's that don't require this bullshit. We have many ways to tackle this problem, it's the hyperfocus on Bitcoin that, in my opinion, makes people go for Lightning network anyway.
Solana is incredibly centralized compared to BTC. The higher the TPS on your base layer the harder it is to meet the hardware requirements to run a full node. Scaling in layers is the solution.
Eth's L2s are a confusing mess. They offer a variety of degrees of security and decentralization, some of them, like Polygon, are a network run with only 15 validators, yikes! And many of them are secured by a single bridge. There have been plenty of notable bridge hacks, it is not fun when your currency gets depegged.
Solana currently has 1777 validators - which doesn't look like much compared to Bitcoin, but is actually way more than enough for any practical intents and purposes.