Proclaiming the death of lightning in the context of the fee market last month is getting caught up in a frame of mind I don’t think many subscribe to, it goes like this.

1) Fees are high

2) Opening / closing channels is expensive / difficult

3) lightning is broken because as bitcoin grows, blockspace demand increases

This seems perfectly logical on the surface, but consider for a second what you’re accepting here.

You’re accepting that blockspace demand from bitcoin’s success is driven by silly pictures, as this is what’s driving the current fee market. Is this the wild success and blockspace demand you’re thinking of?

If you think bitcoins killer use case is NFTs (even the people who created these ordinals say they are a fad), then yes this is a logical conclusion, and lightning does not scale NFTs (tho I think taproot assets does fwiw).

But, and I think this is the majority of people, if you think bitcoin block space demand is driven by payments and usage in the future, this is exactly what lightning was designed for.

Lightning is a shunt for bitcoin payments. As payments increase, incentives to get off chain do as well. The entry fee is a Bitcoin transaction, from there you’re paying a fraction of the cost on lightning.