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Hi guys,
I've got a doubt that has been puzzling me for while and I hope some of you can shed some light on it.
The consensus is that the Lightning Network is going to solve bitcoin's scaling problem.
I do believe Lightning is an innovative solution and I do like off-chain solutions, but I have one issue that makes me think that Lightning will not be the solution to bitcoin's scaling problem.
Every day I make many transactions to buy goods and services at many different merchants. I usually pay by card. If I'd use Lightning I would have to create a peer-to-peer channel between me and the merchant, which entails funding transactions on the blockchain and settlement transactions on the blockchain. These are two on-chain transactions!
This process would have to be repeated for every purchase I make with any merchant. I therefore conclude that Lightning transactions coincide with onchain transactions.
The only way, from what I understand, that Lightning is going to solve the scaling problem, is that the channels stay open for a longer time. In my case, I can see this happening only when I do recurring payments, for instance Amazon, bills, coffee shop, food shopping. In this case though, transactions are usually in one direction, which means, once the funding transaction has been fully spent, the channel will need to be closed and another re-created.
The above cases lead me to think that even though Lightning is a solution to offload work from the blockchain, in practice though, since we need short lived channels, it won't happen.
Please confirm the validity of the thought or prove me wrong.
I really appreciate your answers.
Thanks
R
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