I am not a Lightning user because I don't think BTC is for spending, but I think a simple terminological shift could be beneficial. If people have trouble conceptualizing "funding channels", try call it "topping up accounts".
Debit cards, phone cards, transportation cards... all have to be topped up (or at least can be). Most people are familiar and used to this concept. If the mechanics/UX in Lightning can mimic that, it should work.
That’s an interesting analogy but it breaks down when the goal is to show someone how to receive a zap. If you can’t receive without first paying to open a channel, that’s friction.
I explain it to my bartenders as the same preauth they do when they open a tab for a customer. But now imagine that the bar has a business to business tab open with the bar next door. The customer goes next door on his pub crawl and wants to pay them. Customer authorizes withdrawal of the funds from the tab they already have open at the first bartender's bar with a secret. The money transfer occurs between the open tab then the b2b tab after the validation.
Oddly I find bartenders get that analogy easily. Especially those that work at places with multiple bars in one complex and they each have their own bank that doesn't allow tabs to be shared across bars.
While they get it they don't consider it optimal. The permissionless trustless concepts seem to mean nothing to them. The world has gotten used to hub and spoke.. A centralized processor. And they've yet to realize how that is the problem.
Almost nobody spends any time thinking about how money and payment systems work.
