Is Lightning going to ensure Bitcoin dominance?

[James_CRYPTOSTAR.MONEY]

https://cryptostar.money/blog/will-dash-and-litecoin-be-struck-by-lighting/

Suggests that if users can pay with Bitcoin using Lighting enabled wallets than Dash and Litecoin are pointless. Is this right?

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[Haunebu]

Lightning network is still in its experimental phase and its too early to proclaim something like that op. Dash and Litecoin are still way ahead in terms of TX speeds and time at present.

We will know what the LN is truly capable of when its fully developed and ready to go.

[mocacinno]

I'm a fan of the lightning network, but it's meant for smaller payments, and is less safe than an on-chain transaction... So there'll always be a place for altcoins like litecoin or dash... Altough they might lose some of their marketshare due to the LN.

Just my opinion based on running a lightning-enabled website for a "long" time (at least, a long time in the lightning network existance timeframe).

Basically, like the article said: if i was selling a second hand DVD, i'd prefer being payed with a LN invoice, if i was selling my car and i wanted fast confirmations, i'd accept LTC

[Beerwizzard]

I'm a fan of the lightning network, but it's meant for smaller payments, and is less safe than an on-chain transaction... So there'll always be a place for altcoins like litecoin or dash... Altough they might lose some of their marketshare due to the LN.

I guess you would still be able to send on chain transactions if it is needed. But I agree that all those shitcoins will keep existing. There are a lot of coins with faster transactions and lower fees and they are competing with each other and none of them yet got a serious market dominance.

Basically, like the article said: if i was selling a second hand DVD, i'd prefer being payed with a LN invoice, if i was selling my car and i wanted fast confirmations, i'd accept LTC

Emm, that's what LN is created for. It doesn't seem like someone wants to buy an expensive car and he can't wait some minutes and pay an extra dollar as a fee.

[mk4]

Re: Is Lightning going to ensure Bitcoin dominance?

I mean, bitcoin is still the dominant coin even if LN is still in it's alpha/beta stage. 🤷 But yea, I think it's going to affect the percentage of BTC's dominance by a bit(but probably not that much). When LN becomes successful, those people who say "how can I buy coffee with my BTC? with these fees" can finally shut up.

Suggests that if users can pay with Bitcoin using Lighting enabled wallets than Dash and Litecoin are pointless. Is this right?

They'll probably lose a bit of recognition in the speed category, but LTC still has it's own uses; taking into consideration that as far as I know they're testing mimblewimble on LTC.

[Slow death]

Suggests that if users can pay with Bitcoin using Lighting enabled wallets than Dash and Litecoin are pointless. Is this right?

I will not make comparisons between altcoins Vs bitcoins because this discussion never ends but what we have  ask is:

- Why do people need Litecoin?

- Why Do People Need Dash?

we will eventually see the crypto world being legalized, probably anonymous coins will be targeted by governments. the technology will be much better in a few years and will allow bitcoin to be faster and with much less fees and a good investment, this will cause many altcoins to disappear or not have a large popularity that currently have

[leonair]

Of course it'll but for as long as it's not yet implemented and the transactions are not yet secured enough with it then we can't tell what will happen next. If the time comes that it's fully implemented with no underlying problems afterwards then I'm confident that it'll surely affect the dominance of Bitcoin over some other altcoins as paying smaller would become faster and cheaper.

Faster and cheaper fees is the real deal with Cryptocurrencies right now and even though Bitcoin doesn't have it yet but still it's the most used Crypto.

[dothebeats]

If eCommerce were to get in to cryptomarkets then yes, the lightning network would help ensure bitcoin dominance. If not, I don't think it will even be that significant to begin with. Well, LN is already helping the network in its own ways, but for people to really see its worth, there has to be some large volume of transactions coming in, else it's just another option for people who want to just try it out or avoid the expensive fees on the main chain.

[franky1]

LN is a separate independant network, the units of account of LN (msats) are not even recognised on the bitcoin network

LN is not even fixed/tethered to bitcoin. you can change the chainhash to be litecoin or other alts
infact you can run a litewallet that api's to a factory/server and not even worry about blockchains
thus LN can actually promote litecoin far more than bitcoin because the onramp (cost/time) to lock collateral to LN is faster and cheaper using litecoin

people keep assuming that LN is a sole unique feature that is only bitcoin enabled due to the silly buzz words like "layer" but the reality is that LN is not a layer at all. its just fluffy buzzword used for PR to do the fame game of garnering sponsorship/funding by trying to mention the word bitcoin/crypto/blockchain being related to LN

[nutildah]

LN is a separate independant network, the units of account of LN (msats) are not even recognised on the bitcoin network

LN is not even fixed/tethered to bitcoin. you can change the chainhash to be litecoin or other alts
thus LN can actually promote litecoin far more than bitcoin because the onramp (cost/time) to lock collateral to LN is faster and cheaper using litecoin

people keep assuming that LN is a sole unique feature that is only bitcoin enabled due to the silly buzz words like "layer" but the reality is that LN is not a layer at all. its just fluffy buzzword used for PR to do the fame game of garnering sponsorship/funding by trying to mention the word bitcoin/crypto/blockchain being related to LN

It is a second layer protocol that serves to help scale bitcoin. The main opponents of LN tend to be those who hold a grudge against bitcoin and don't want it to achieve even greater levels of success. No one is conflating it with being bitcoin. So far the whole milisats issue has proven to be a non-problem.

[Yakamoto]

https://cryptostar.money/blog/will-dash-and-litecoin-be-struck-by-lighting/

Suggests that if users can pay with Bitcoin using Lighting enabled wallets than Dash and Litecoin are pointless. Is this right?

As other users have mentioned, the lightning network isn't ready for large-scale implementation, despite the fact that it has been in development for a number of years by now. Once it does get completed and can work effectively, then we can argue about whether Litecoin and Dash have any place in the crypto marketplace. Until they, they still serve their own purpose. I personally don't think that either Litecoin or Dash would become "obsolete" since many other cryptos would be tossed out due to their obsolescence first.

I'm trying to remember when they started to work on the Lightning network, it was probably at least conceptualized 5 years ago if they weren't actively working on it.

[WhyFhy]

In due time yes. Simple answer for a simple question

[Genemind]

I think LN has to go through a lot of tests first before they proceed to further adoption. There would be conflicts of people would have bitcoin yet don't know how to transact it with Ln. I wonder why they have to choose only between Litecoin and dash where there are really best coins on top of the list.

[franky1]

It is a second layer protocol that serves to help scale bitcoin. The main opponents of LN tend to be those who hold a grudge against bitcoin and don't want it to achieve even greater levels of success. No one is conflating it with being bitcoin. So far the whole milisats issue has proven to be a non-problem.

its not a bitcoin layer. LN is its own network.. the N of LN stands for network.
LN is not acronym'd BL2

IF and im being strong emphatic here. IF LN was a utility thats only sole function was to tender to bitcoin and actually catered to bitcoin alone. that would be a start to a whole different story.
also
IF and again strongly emphatic here IF LN when you run scenarios actually done what it proposes then it would be of benefit
LN is for a small niche utility which has not been met and at the moment wont be met. thus over promoted as some mass solution to bitcoin woes, even though bitcoins woes are caused by devs stifling bitcoin just to promote LN

there are many stats around like bitcoin UTXO stats, coinage which reveal how often people 'spend' bitcoin. even Visacard have statistics of how often people spend fiat. and if you put these spending habits against LN's scenarios. such as opening a group of channels(for efficient chance of route success) for a month. and work out the cost/utility benefit of saving in LN and the onramp tx utilisd to get in and out on bitcoins network. LN is not so 'infinite/instant/cheap'

i think too many people throw around buzzwords like LN, layers, scaling, but never actually bother using the systems/running scenario's. they just want to jump on the promo band wagon without actually knowing the details


in short. did bank promissory notes increase the adoption of gold. or actually decrease the number of gold hoarders, and instead increase the adoption of cheaper options like nickel and copper coins once people wished to settle up

[mk4]

In due time yes. Simple answer for a simple question

Nope, not guaranteed at all. Though the LN team and the LN wallet makers are definitely doing great and that I'm definitely hoping for LN's success, it's success rate is definitely NOT 100%. We simply don't know yet.

[WhyFhy]

In due time yes. Simple answer for a simple question

Nope, not guaranteed at all. Though the LN team and the LN wallet makers are definitely doing great and that I'm definitely hoping for LN's success, it's success rate is definitely NOT 100%. We simply don't know yet.

Suite yourself, if your under weight and dont care to much about custodial (we are talking under .2BTC here) LN is doing just fine from my experience.
I'm gonna advocate it no matter what really.


But honestly even if LN somehow fails, it will have a successor based on the same concept (Layer 2) I believe Layer 2 IS the answer to the scaling problem, how the final execution will happen is beyond me.

A friend of mine told me he just hope's its worked out in the long run and LN will be to BTC what TCP is to the internet.

[mk4]

Suite yourself, if your under weight and dont care to much about custodial (we are talking under .2BTC here) LN is doing just fine from my experience.
I'm gonna advocate it no matter what really.

Never said I wasn't for LN, as I'm definitely for it. My point was just that there are no guarantees for it's success.

But honestly even if LN somehow fails, it will have a successor based on the same concept (Layer 2) I believe Layer 2 IS the answer to the scaling problem, how the final execution will happen is beyond me.

Pretty much. The amount of people who think LN is only bitcoin's solution to the scaling problem is staggering. It's just the very tip of the iceberg.

[pooya87]

Dash and Litecoin ARE pointless with or without lightning network. Dash is a centralized premined coin that their developers have always been shady about it and litecoin is a copy of bitcoin with no innovations other than lower time between blocks and pointless algorithm change to scrypt which achieved nothing.

the real competition of bitcoin is a coin with different technology that is innovative and not just copies bitcoin. and no, in my opinion LN is not a guarantee to ensure bitcoin dominance. but you have to realize that 95% of the current coins have no innovation and are so poorly designed that they can't even begin to compete with bitcoin so bitcoin already has more than 98% dominance over the market with LN it will turn into 99%!

[okala]

Lightning network is still in its experimental phase and its too early to proclaim something like that op. Dash and Litecoin are still way ahead in terms of TX speeds and time at present.

We will know what the LN is truly capable of when its fully developed and ready to go.

I agree with you  lightning network despite it high technicality stiil remains the answers to the retail problems of bitcoin long block confirmation process, I don't agree on the third party involvement in the amazon bitcoin lightening process due to the fact that it will go through another medium before arriving at it final destination which is one of the things bitcoin try to avoid. But the fact still remains that if bitcoin lightening network is well improve on and can answer to the long confirmation process of bitcoin transaction the retail shopping will be easier for both the shops owner and they client.

[James_CRYPTOSTAR.MONEY]

Summary
I am the original poster (OP). I would like to thank everyone who responded. I have learnt that Lightning Network is a Level 2 protocol that can work with many blockchains. It reduces fees and transaction times at the expense of some security. It is also very early days in its development and there is no guarantee that it will work at scale as its inventors hope.

The majority view seems to be that if Lightning Network works, and it is a big 'if', then it would, to some degree make altcoins slightly less attractive for smaller transactions as suggested by the original article but if you were selling something of high value like a car you are unlikely to object to the slightly higher fee and block time of the Bitcoin network.