Oddbean new post about login | logout Most of the world does not need to run a Lightning node. In fact, that would probably be detrimental to Lightning altogether.
Every human running a Lightning node would be an incredible amount of UTXOs and Bitcoin probably can't handle that, but that doesn't mean that many homes couldn't run a node for their families or we couldn't have community nodes/banks for people. It's still too complicated for most. We're getting there though.
I don’t think it’s productive or desirable for the average person to run a Lightning node. In fact I’m convinced it’s economically unsustainable.
whenever I see things like this I am reminded of what the head of IBM thought the market for computers would be in the 1960s.
Everyone having a computer is justified. Ever user being a node in a network defeats the entire purpose. It's like asking every internet user to run their own ISP.
I'm not arguing with you, I'm just seeing it a different way. every installation of IPFS Desktop is basically a node in that network. it's not necessary, but it's an example of how it could work. not everyone needs a fully featured node with all of the bells and whistles. but for just the simple things like maintaining a contact list, keeping copies of important notes and other stuff, keeping track of transactions and balances, seems simple enough to be operational on a cell phone platform. and in the early days of the Internet, almost nobody had cell phones. that took 15 years to fully develop. I'm just saying, don't count out possibilities. we don't know where this is going, and the further we can get from centralized services, the better.