Very biased article.

Thanks for a comment. I’d suggest you to read more than just the first issue, before calling an article ‘very biased’. There are 26 more concerns that might change your mind. And I’m not against Lightning Network, but neglecting problems is not a good way to mature.

there will be no evolution of Bitcoin and Lightning software after 30 years

I did mention, that Channel Factories might mitigate this issue, but the final implementation is not clear, and system will probably stop being ‘trustless’.

transaction capacity will stay at 7tps forever.

LN is pushed as the main scaling solution for BTC for the next few years. Onchain scaling via block size increase failed with SegWit2x cancellation, and high transaction fees didn’t incentivize community to change its mind, so I don’t see how the number of onchain transactions can significantly increase any time soon.

C’moon, think about the world 30 years ago and now. Has it stayed the same?

Did Bitcoin tps max capacity significantly increased since 2010, when 1mb block size limit was introduced? No. And that’s already 8 years.

Now let’s do the math again.

30 years is with ~7tps, but let’s assume that wide SegWit adoption will push this number down to 15 years.

But 1 channel for each person on Earth is a very centralized system. Even Lightning Labs proposed an Autopilot, which will open at least 5 channels to different routing hubs during onboarding.

15 * 5 = 75 years.

Don’t forget that:

• Sometimes channels will be closed
• Some people will open more than 5 channels
• Big funds will be moved onchain
• World population is constantly growing

So it’s clear that with a current protocol it would be impossible to fit everybody into the LN, unless block size will be heavily increased, or the size of ‘opening LN channel’ transaction will be somehow dramatically decreased, but it can introduce new issues.

And that’s the purpose of this article — to show that LN is a fascinated second layer solution, but it’s very far from being ready for a global adoption, and community should think about other approaches that can make scaling process much smoother, and mitigate risks associated with LN (e.g. if a LN will become heavily centralized ‘hub-and-spoke’ system).

Unfortunately, BTC community is very hostile towards any healthy criticism, and my post at /r/Bitcoin was heavily downvoted by people, who (similar to you), didn’t read more than intro or the first few issues (they actually admitted that).

P.S. I’ve added your concerns to that issue and linked this conversation. Please feel free to comment on other issues, so I might link to our future conversations as well.