Enjoyed reading this. As a lay-man I find lighning is great for merchants (static receivers) and their customers (random payees with small balances). I think it achieved its goals - with all the solved and current issues it's fair to say LN is still very much experimental/research tech, but also very usable.

Really smart guys are working on it, it'll keep getting better. Excited about the next big L2 push, though - instead of focusing on one solution it really seems better to work on multiple fronts. A bit more demanding to keep up, but that's true also for the rogue nodes in the network...