Oddbean new post about login | logout Nobody likes to admit that running self-custodial lightning is not even close to changing your own oil...it is more like extracting rubber from a tree, chopping down the tree for wood, and mining for graphite simply to make your own pencil. It is so bad that we are talking about going back to fucking ecash MINTS (an idea that was abandoned in the 90's for centralization risks) just to make it make sense. nostr:nevent1qqswuu7uv4d254tk70a2lzwkdv46gva4c5h3a698mufpvjd2vuhv69cpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyq7cg2h7e40zj0egke38jvmsfglm3ns4825367g2ky0k5afdgjjz6qcyqqqqqqgzfjgey
This post was mostly to provoke. But I do find it ironic that we criticze ethereum for being overly naiveand shifting narratives to suit the inconvenient facts on the ground...and now we are doing the same thing by saying lightning is now rails for trusted banks with weak proof mechanisms, hoping that the angels of human nature will keep the banks small and communal.
I've been saying this. Then lightning nerds wanna front like it's the best thing since sliced bread and pretend people will come around or something. They argue the UX or UI can improve it. It can't. The architecture doesn't work like that.
I think the most likely scenario is that lightning is quietly repurposed into rails between different solutions, like mints and sidechains. Eventually, once those solutions get tired of trying to maintain the lighrning networm at scale, we'll sunset it even more quietly and tell ourselves that was the plan all along.