Splicing and collaborative channel opening will help distribute the cost of opening/managing lightning channels. There are many smart minds thinking of these issues and coming up with great solutions, although some may take time
Discussion
This would help with opening lightning channels, but wouldn’t we still be expected to keep our funds on a hot wallet? In order to swap back to L1, we have to make an on-chain transaction. How could this be practical if fees are $500?
You won’t have to keep all your funds in a hot wallet. Splicing allows for channel size management, increasing or decreasing the size of a channel. You don’t have to settle all your transactions on the main chain, and likely most people in the future will never settle a transaction themselves on-chain ever. Scaling btc use will need lots of improvements like ephemeral anchoring too, but it will all lead to a world where you can keep most btc in cold storage and move it to lightning or other possible L2s when needed to spend. I’m certainly no dev or expert, but I have had the same concerns in the past, not anymore