For me, the LN is currently the weak point.
Already Bitcoin was looked upon as complicated, trying to push LN at this stage to the average Joe is a bit too early.
Also, there is one tiny problem currently with LN, you still need to open and close channels and if you don't have enough places to spend them in the network opening and closing channels will happen a lot more often, not taking enough tx from the chain and still taking a bit of space in the blocks.
I hope the LN won't be one of those things that never got adopted because they were too far ahead of their time.
LN is not bitcoin
the future concept of LN is this
people deposit funds into LN factory vaults(bank2.0 counterparts) using 1 onchain tx fee (call it a memebership fee)
the factory having 50% control, of funds then offchain hands out 'channels' with balance measured in a pegged token called Msats
these channels are not the signed broadcastable bitcoin cltv. but instead LN HTLC's.
the factories become the collectors/arbitraters of closing sessions where they receive a closing channe request and they just hand out a new opening channels with new balances for who was owed what
to actually exit LN back to bitcoin you end up paying the onchain tx fee (call it a membership cancelation fee)
how this affects bitcoin onchain.
yes less tx's per block.. but this means less people actually using BITCOIN
yes less tx's fee's to pay monthly if you factory membership for a year but this means less people actually using BITCOIN
because factories are the managers/arbitrators, people dont need to full node bitcoin. they just need to server API their factory bcause they know they put a 1 year lock+ on their funds.. yes that means people can just phone app LN. but that means less people full noding BITCOIN
bitcoin network due to less full nodes becomes less secure. innovation of bitcoin dies because no one is really relaying/fullnoding daily. and pools drop hashpower to cope with their income vs electric costs
..
in short if its gonna cost $20 to make a onchain TX fee, yea people will run off to a new network of cheaper fee's. we already see in third world countries that many use altcoins because a 25cent bitcoin fee is like 5 hours labour. how many americans would use paypal if it was $20 to sign up and another $20 cancel account
..
LN is not bitcoins salvation.
at very most its a niche side network offchain for spammer transactors. much like services like coinbase and what was bitinstant offered to allow offchain arbitraging and user to user swaps
..
LN's business model is to follow the same business model of banking 1700-1950's. hoard the gold, let people play with IOU's and make people prefer to exit the system with less precious assets(cheap fee altcoins)
