But when one channel is down all the others keep working. Pretty cool actually.
Discussion
If you want to tie up capital in a bunch of channels, sure.
It's still convoluted, inconvenient, tricky, and way too complicated.
Locking up is one way to look at it. On the other hand you can also think of it as unlocking capital for near instant settlement payments.
I don't see if that way at all. The whole system is borked. Flawed from the get-go.
Flawed? Imperfect, sure. But so is Bitcoin base layer as well. It’s all technological trade offs at this point but still massively improving all the time.
It’s pretty amazing actually that if a node goes down the entire network continues to function. LN unlocks a ton of potential (near instant settlement, etc) that base-layer Bitcoin never can.
I'm not sure the convenience is worth the hassle. I'm never sure that chasing convenience is ever a good thing.
Personally I don’t see lightning as a ‘convenience’ at all. It’s an upgrade. It’s absolutely essential to me and how I interact with the network. I literally couldn’t use Bitcoin in 2025 without it.
But to each their own, there’s no one forcing anyone else to use it! 🤙
Not sure why you say tied up? It’s still fully self-custodial. You can close a channel at any moment, there is no lock up at all.
It’s simply how decentralization works. Same reason we want multiple nodes and multiple miners on the base layer. Multiple nodes and multiple channels per node is what makes LN decentralized and amazingly robust! Any one node on the network can go down and I can still transact flawlessly.
If someone is relying on a single channel and complaining when it goes down, it’s not a fault of the network itself.
What if someone can only afford a single channel?
Who TF can afford to have multiple big channels these days? Not I. Also, every channel open is another risk vector to manage.
I mean if you are transacting with less then 100k sats custodial LN is perfectly fine and in fact preferable imo. But that’s another discussion lol. 😆